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JUN  23  1941 


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I 


BX  9869  . 

C4  C4 

■r■^..■S<^.^J^^»^  ^ 

Chadwick, 

John 

White, 

1840- 

i   1904. 

William  Ellery 

Channing; 

minister 

of  religion 

^ 


^p  f  o^n  Whitt  CI)alitoidk. 


WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING.  With 
two  photogravure  Portraits.  Crown  8vo, 
gilt  top,  $1.75,  net.     Postage  extra. 

THEODORE  PARKER:  Preacher  and 
Reformer.  With  two  photogravure  Por- 
traits.    Crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  $2.00. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY, 

Boston  and  New  York. 


WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 


WILLIAM    ELLE 
CHANJNTINa 


IN  23  1941 


MINISTER  OF  RELIGIOJST 


By  JOHN  WHITE   CHAD  WICK 


BOSTON   AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

1903 


COPYRIGHT,    1903,    BY  JOHN    WHITE   CHADWICK 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


Published  March,  iqos 


SDeDicateD 

To  those  men  and  women  of  the  present 

time  who  are  endeavoring 

in  the  spirit  of 

WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

to  unite  all  social  classes,  sects,  and  nations  in 

the  bonds  of  mutual  understanding, 

fraternal  sympathy,  and 

sincere  good-wiU 


PEEFACE 

I  HAVE  been  impelled  to  write  a  new  life  of 
Channing  by  several  motives,  two  of  which  have  a 
somewhat  contradictory  appearance,  one  of  them 
being  the  deeper  interest  in  Channing  which  has 
of  late  been  manifested  in  quarters  where  there 
had  been  imperfect  knowledge  of  his  qualities,  too 
little  sympathy  with  his  spirit,  and  the  other  the 
disproportion  which,  I  thought,  existed  between 
the  significance  of  his  thought  and  message  and 
their  limited  appreciation.  The  deeper  interest 
seemed  to  invite  a  fresh  delineation;  the  inade- 
quate appreciation  to  lay  on  me  a  clear  command. 
Moreover,  even  among  those  who  have  had  the 
special  care  of  Channing's  name  and  fame,  I  had 
found  the  younger  generations  more  ignorant  of 
him  and  more  indifferent  to  him  than  I  thought 
was  right,  and  I  desired  to  communicate  to  them 
something  of  the  enthusiasm  and  delight  which  for 
many  years  had  animated  my  own  breast.  I  was 
encouraged  to  make  the  attempt  by  the  cordial 
reception   accorded   to   my    "  Theodore  Parker," 


viii  PREFACE 

whicli  was  published  two  years  since.  I  knew 
without  warning  that  to  write  Channing's  life  was 
a  very  different  thing  from  writing  Parker's,  — 
as  different  as  carving  a  statue  from  painting  a 
picture,  so  much  warmth  and  color  were  there 
in  Parker's  experience  and  personality,  so  little  in 
the  older  and  the  greater  man's ;  but  I  was  per- 
suaded that  there  were  aspects  of  Channing's  life 
that  assured  to  any  faithful  presentation  of  it  a 
peculiar  and  dramatic  interest,  and  these  I  have 
endeavored  to  make  plain.  There  has  been  for 
me  additional  instigation  in  my  sense  that  while 
on  certain  lines  the  thought  and  purpose  of  our 
time  are  approximating  Channing's,  and  should 
enjoy  a  livelier  conscious  sympathy  with  him,  on 
other  lines  they  are  departing  from  him  to  their 
hurt  and  shame,  and  making  themselves  amenable 
to  his  deprecation  and  rebuke.  Simultaneously  I 
have  felt  that  Channing's  best  work,  his  surest 
prophecy,  was  more  upon  the  social  side  than  on 
the  theological,  and  I  have  thought  I  could  not  do 
the  present  time  a  better  service  than  to  confront 
it  with  his  lofty  spirit  and  his  serious  aims. 

In  the  way  of  sources,  I  need  hardly  say  that 
my  principal  indebtedness  has  been  to  Channing's 
"  Works  "  (which,  as  published  by  the  American 
Unitarian  Association,  contain  in  one  volume  the 


PREFACE  ix 

six  originally  published  and  "  The  Perfect  Life  ") 
and  the  "  Memoir  "  of  1848,  which,  however  defec- 
tive its  arrangement,  is  remarkable  for  its  full  dis- 
closure of  Channing's  mind  in  his  own  words.  Two 
misfortunes  have  attended  my  work :  the  burning 
of  a  car  in  southern  California  which  contained 
nearly  all  of  Dr.  Channing's  manuscripts  and  let- 
ters, and  the  death  of  his  son,  William  Francis 
Channing,  only  a  little  while  before  I  began  the 
collection  of  my  material.  His  affectionate  and 
reverent  memory  would  have  been  an  inestimable 
service,  and  its  loss  to  me  I  account  much  greater 
than  that  of  Channing's  manuscripts,  which,  I  am 
persuaded,  had  ample  representation  in  the  "  Me- 
moir "  and  "  Works."  Some  of  the  most  precious 
escaped  the  general  destruction ;  and  of  these  two 
of  the  most  important,  the  Baltimore  Sermon  and 
that  on  Self-Denial,  I  now  proudly  call  my  own. 
I  have  had  a  full  line  of  Channing's  publications 
in  their  original  pamphlet  forms,  which  have 
seemed  to  bring  me  into  closer  touch  with  him 
than  the  books  in  which,  with  few  exceptions,  they 
were  ultimately  incorporated.  Much  has  been 
written  about  Channing ;  little  of  the  best  has, 
I  trust,  escaped  my  attention.  The  hundredth 
anniversary  of  his  birth  was  particularly  fertile 
in  reminiscences  and  appreciations.     But  I  have 


X  PREFACE 

valued  quite  as  much,  or  more,  the  side  glances  of 
many  biographies  of  his  contemporaries,  and  other 
books  illustrative  of  his  time.  It  was  at  one  time 
my  purpose  to  make  and  print  a  list  of  the  books 
and  articles  which  had  served  me  in  various  de- 
grees, but  I  found  that,  while  it  would  contain 
several  hundred  titles,  to  make  it  complete  would 
be  very  difficult.  My  footnotes  and  other  refer- 
ences will,  in  part,  make  good  the  lack  of  such  a 
list. 

One  of  the  happiest  fortunes  of  my  life  has  been 
an  affectionate  relation  with  some  of  the  early 
leaders  who  knew  Channing  well,  —  Dewey,  Fur- 
ness,  Bartol,  Bellows,  Hedge,  —  and  many  things 
which  they  told  me  I  have  not  forgotten.  I  have 
had  much  direct  help  from  others,  from  so  many 
that  I  cannot  name  them  all ;  but  some  expression 
of  my  gratitude  there  must  be  to  Dr.  Channing's 
granddaughter,  Mrs.  Grace  EUery  Channing- Stet- 
son, to  whom  I  am  much  indebted,  and  to  my 
friend  William  Channing  Gannett,  whom  little 
that  throws  light  on  Channing  has  escaped.  For 
the  index  —  a  laborious  task,  which  for  me  would 
have  been  harder  than  to  write  the  book  —  I  am 
indebted  to  my  wife  ;  also  for  much  help  in  the 
proofreading,  to  say  nothing  of  her  good  advice 
at  many  doubtful  points,  and  her  continuous  en- 
couragement. 


PREFACE  xi 

It  is  sixty  years  to-day  since  Channing  died. 
So  long  dead,  almost  his  lifetime,  lie  yet  speaks  to 
many  minds  and  hearts.  If  what  I  have  written 
extends  the  sphere  of  his  influence  ever  so  little,  I 
shall  be  glad.  If  this  satisfaction  is  denied  me, 
I  shall  still  have  had  for  two  years  such  discourse 
with  the  spirit  of  this  great  and  good  man  as  has 
been  to  me  a  holy  contemplation,  to  be  prized 
hereafter  among  the  happiest  fortunes  of  my  life. 

J.  W.  C. 

October  2,  1902. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTEK  I 
The  Newport  Boy 1 

CHAPTER  II 
Cambridge  and  Richmond 28 

CHAPTER  ni 
The  Parish  Minister 55 

CHAPTER  W 
Evolution  and  Reaction 84 

CHAPTER  V 
The  Divided  Fold 115 

CHAPTER  VI 
Things  New  and  Old 149 

CHAPTER  VII 
Letters  and  Politics 184 

CHAPTER  VIII 
What  Channing  preached 215 

CHAPTER  IX 
Between  Two  Fires 259 

CHAPTER  X 
The  Social  Reformer 296 

CHAPTER  XI 
The  Open  Mind 328 


xiv  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XII 
The  Personal  Aspect 359 

CHAPTER  Xin 
The  Last  Stage ,    ,    .    .    393 

CHAPTER  XIV 
As  Dying  and  Behold! 422 

The  frontispiece  portrait  of  William  EUery  Channing  is  from 
the  original  painting  (1839)  by  S.  Gambardella,  owned  by  Miss 
Elizabeth  P.  Channing  of  Milton. 

The  portrait  at  page  212  is  from  the  painting  (1811)  by 
Washington  AllstoUj  at  the  Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts. 


CHRONOLOGY 

1780.  April  7.     Born  in  Newport,  R.  I. 

1780.  May  28.     Baptized  by  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles. 

1792.  Goes  to  New  London,  Conn.,  to  study  with  his 

uncle,  Henry  C  banning. 

1792.  September  21.     His  father  dies. 

1794.  Enters  Harvard  College. 

1798.  Is  graduated  from  Harvard. 

1798.  Goes  as  tutor  to  Richmond. 

1800.  Returns  to  Newport. 

1802.  Studies  theology  in  Cambridge. 

1803.  June  1.     Ordained  and  installed  Minister  of  the 

Federal  Street  Society. 

1809.  New  church  is  built. 

1810.  His  brother  Francis  dies  and  (May  25)  his  nephew, 

William  Henry  Channing,  is  born. 
1812.  Preaches  anti-war  sermon. 

1814.  Preaches  at  King's  Chapel  on  Fall  of  Napoleon 

Bonaparte. 

1814.  Is  married  to  his  cousin,  Ruth  Gibbs. 

1815.  Liberal  Christians   assailed,   and   Channing   an- 

swers assaults  with  letters  to  Thacher  and 
Worcester.  Most  signal  year  of  "Unitarian 
Controversy." 

1816.  Sermon  upon  War  before  Congregational  minis- 

ters of  Massachusetts. 

1819.  Preaches  "  Baltimore  Sermon  "  at  ordination  of 

Jared  Sparks. 

1820.  Founds  Berry  Street  Conference. 

1821.  Delivers  Dudleian  Lecture  at  Harvard  College. 

1822.  Goes  to  Europe  for  health  in  May. 


XVI  CHRONOLOGY 

1823.  Returns  from  Europe  in  August. 

1824.  Ezra    Stiles    Gannett    becomes    his    colleague, 

Channing  preaching  his  ordination  sermon. 

1825.  American  Unitarian  Association  organized. 
1825-30.     Writes  articles  on  Milton,  Fdnelon,  and  Napoleon. 

1826.  Preaches  sermon  at  dedication  Second  Unitarian 

Congregational  Church,  New  York. 

1828.  Preaches   "Likeness  to  God"  at  ordination  of 

Frederick  A.  Farley,  in  Providence,  R.  1. 

1830.  May  26.     Preaches  "  Spiritual  Freedom  "  :  an- 

nual Election  Sermon. 

1830.  Publishes   "  Discourses,  Reviews,  and   Miscella- 

nies." 

1830.  Goes  to  West  Indies  in  November. 

1831.  January  1.     First  number  of  Garrison's  "Lib- 

erator "  appears. 

1831.  Channing  returns  from  West  Indies  in  May. 

1832.  Publishes  second  volume  :  eleven  sermons. 

1834.  May  25.     His   mother,  Lucy  EUery  Channing, 

dies. 

1835.  Publishes  "  Slavery  "  soon  after  pro-slavery  mob. 

1835.  Preaches  and  publishes  sermon  upon  War. 

1836.  Publishes  "  The  Abolitionists,"  an  open  letter  to 

James  G.  Birney. 

1837.  Writes  open  letter  to  Henry  Clay  on  Annexation 

of  Texas. 

1837.  Takes   leading   part   in    Faneuil  Hall   meeting, 

called  to  consider  murder  of  Elijah  P.  Lovejoy. 

1838.  Delivers  and  publishes  "  Lecture  upon  War." 
1838.  Heads  petition  for  release  of  Abner  Kneeland. 
1838.  Delivers  "  Self-Culture  "  lecture. 

1838.  July  15.     Emerson's  Divinity  School  Address. 

1839.  "  Remarks  on  Slavery  Question  "  :  an  open  letter 

to  Jonathan  Phillips  criticising  Henry  Clay. 

1840.  Delivers  and  publishes  "  Elevation  of  the  Labor- 

ing Classes  "  lectures. 

1840.  Publishes  "  Emancipation." 

1841.  May  19.     Theodore  Parker's  South  Boston  ser- 

mon. 


CHRONOLOGY 


xvu 


1841.  May    30.      Channing    preaches   sermon,    « The 

Church,"  in  Philadelphia. 

1841.  Works  published  in  five  volumes  ;  sixth  in  1843. 

1842.  April  7.     His   sixty-second  birthday.     Preaches 

for  the  last  time  at  Federal  Street. 
1842.  Publishes    "Duty  of  the  Free  States,"  in  two 

parts. 
1842.  August  1.     Delivers  "  Lenox  Address  "  on  eighth 

anniversary  of  West  India  emancipation. 
1842.  October  2.     Channing  dies  at  Bennington,  Vt. 


WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 


CHAPTER   I 
THE   NEWPORT    BOY 

Channing  might  well  tliank  God,  as  he  did 
with  much  fervor,  that  he  was  born  in  Rhode 
Island.  He  was  speaking  of  the  beautiful  island 
of  that  name  on  which  Newport  is  here  built  com- 
pactly together  and  there  loosely  spread  out,  but  he 
had  reason  to  be  further  grateful  for  the  good 
fortune  of  being  born  in  a  State  consecrated  by 
memories  of  Roger  Williams  and  Samuel  Gorton 
to  those  principles  of  religious  liberty  which  were 
the  most  animating  principles  of  his  life.  Wil- 
liams's doctrine  of  "  soul  liberty "  was  a  splendid 
legacy,  not  only  to  the  particular  denomination  from 
which  he  passed,  after  brief  tarrying,  to  a  more 
open  fellowship,  but  to  "a  free  church  in  a  free 
state  "  in  its  now  continental  breadth.  Gorton's 
service,  though  less  conspicuous,  was  perhaps  more 
consistent  in  its  entire  expression  than  Williams's 
impulsive  and  erratic  course.  Even  those  historians  ^ 

1  John  Fiske  aud  Charles  Francis  Adams.  But  see  an  excel- 
lent monograph  by  Lewis  G.  Janes,  Samuell  Gorton :  A  For- 
gotten Founder  of  our  Liberties ;  First  Settler  of  Warwick,  E,  I. 
Proyidence :  Preston  &  Rounds,  1896. 


2  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

who  should  have  done  him  full  justice  have  done 
him  less  than  that,  but  many  who  have  done  better 
than  Gorton  have  fared  worse  with  those  who  are 
the  arbiters  of  fame. 

The  "  beautiful  island  "  of  Channing's  devout 
admiration  had  its  peculiar  associations  with  reli- 
gious liberty,  its  first  settlers  having  been  Anne 
Hutchinson  and  the  little  company  who  went  out- 
side the  camp  with  her,  sharing  her  honorable 
reproach.  During  Channing's  boyhood  the  natural 
beauty  was  not  so  diversified  as  it  has  been  of  late 
by  the  lordly  pleasure  houses  of  a  summer  popula- 
tion; and  though  Newport  had  even  then  its  social 
pride,  it  was  humility  compared  with  the  lavish 
ostentation  with  which  wealth  and  fashion  now 
disport  themselves  along  the  brilliant  avenues  and 
in  the  palatial  villas  which  express  and  flatter  the 
self-importance  of  the  newly  rich.  The  cliffs  and 
beaches  are  less  purely  natural  than  they  were 
when  young  Channing  revelled  in  their  beauty,  but 
man's  control  stops  with  the  ocean's  edge.  Un- 
changed in  its  sublimity  of  calm  or  storm,  that 
gleams  and  glooms  to-day  as  then,  yet  to  few  of 
the  gay  throng  which  drifts  seaward  on  the  tidal 
heat  of  summer  does  it  speak  the  language  which 
it  had  for  Channing's  youth  and  for  his  latest 
years.  In  one  respect,  Newport  and  the  island 
round  about  were  never  less  beautiful  than  at  the 
time  of  Channing's  birth.  The  British  occupation 
had  made  havoc  everywhere,  and  especially  it  had 
denuded   the  landscape  of   the  woods  and  trees 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  3 

which  had  been  its  special  pride.  Every  grow- 
ing thing  that  promised  firewood  the  British  had 
cut  down,  so  that  in  the  winter  before  Channing's 
birth  a  cord  of  such  wood  sold  for  $20  ;  in  good 
money,  I  suppose,  for  in  the  depreciated  currency 
of  the  time  that  would  be  too  little  rather  than  too 
much. 

The  light  of  poetry,  adventure,  and  romance 
lies  warm  on  the  New  England  seaport  towns ; 
on  few,  if  any,  quite  so  pleasantly  as  on  New- 
port. The  town  attracted  the  most  fond  regards 
of  Curtis  in  his  "lotus-eating"  days,  and  from  the 
vantage  of  his  Easy  Chair  his  eye  took  in  its  Re- 
volutionary episodes,  bright  with  the  red  English 
uniforms  and  the  white  and  gold  of  our  gay 
French  allies ;  attractive  with  the  tender  fortunes 
of  the  Robinson  sisters,  those  Quaker  beauties 
whose  chariot  set  a  little  world  on  fire,  and  distin- 
guished by  the  presence  of  Washington  and  Ro- 
chambeau  walking  up  the  Long  Wharf  together 
to  their  joint  reception  in  the  town.  In  his 
"  Oldport  Days  "  Colonel  Higginson  has  harvested 
more  intimate  associations,  the  growth  of  a  pro- 
tracted residence,  out  of  his  treasures  bringing 
things  new  and  old  of  rival  worth.  Only  to  the 
touchstone  that  he  brought  to  the  old  streets 
and  wharves  and  the  vessels  rotting  at  the  piers 
would  these  things  have  yielded  up  their  mysteries. 
Many  have  lived  long  with  them  and  never  guessed 
what  tales  they  had  to  tell. 

Before  the  Revolution  the  town  enjoyed  com- 


4  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

mercial  prominence,  and  already  was  a  watering- 
place  much  prized  by  Southern  planters,  who, 
before  their  pleasure,  had,  perhaps,  first  their  busi- 
ness on  the  wharves,  where  there  were  slaves  from 
Africa  for  such  as  cared  to  purchase  them  for  rum 
or  cash.  One  of  the  cages  in  which  these  slaves 
were  huddled  was  a  visible  testimony  a  short  time 
since,  if  it  is  not  so  stiU.  Three  hundred  Jew- 
ish families  in  the  town  were  proof  of  the  com- 
mercial tone.  Many  of  these  had  been  landed  in 
Newport  by  the  Lisbon  earthquake,  among  them 
Lopez,  a  Portuguese  Jew,  who  owned  eighty-eight 
square-riggers,  sailing  in  his  foreign  trade.  No 
wonder  the  town  boasted  bigger  mail-bags  than 
New  York  I  Its  popidation  in  1774  was  9000, 
but  it  fell  off  4000  the  next  year,  and  must  have 
continued  falling  off  as  the  war  for  independence 
dragged  its  slow  length  along.  If  English  and 
French  occupation  and  the  annual  Southern  visita- 
tion did  not  improve  the  morals  of  the  town,  these 
circumstances  touched  its  manners  to  a  finer  grace, 
while  the  seafaring  and  sailor  life  of  the  townfolk 
made  swearing,  drinking,  and  licentiousness  of 
speech  and  manners  so  abound  as  to  give  the  town 
what  was  esteemed  by  many  its  most  characteristic 
note. 

Of  hardly  any  period  of  Ne\vport's  earlier  his- 
tory have  we  more  vivid  information  than  of  that 
which,  from  our  immediate  point  of  view,  had  for 
its  main  incident  Dr.  Channing's  birth.  The  infor- 
mation is  furnished  by  the  journal  of  the  Baron 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  5 

du  Boiirg  and  tlie  letters  of  Count  Rocliambeau,^ 
whose  impression  of  the  well-to-do  Newporters  was 
that  they  spent  all  their  time  at  table.  Lafayette 
had  left  France  for  America  March  6,  1780,  with 
the  good  news  of  an  intended  fleet  and  army  for 
the  support  of  the  overworn  and  sometimes  despair- 
ing revolutionists,  and,  arriving  April  27,  he  was 
still  on  the  high  seas  when  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning  was  born  April  7,  the  third  of  ten  children, 
nine  of  whom  reached  maturity  and  three  ^  attained 

^  See  also  the  diary  of  Ezra  Stiles,  who,  just  after  Channing's 
birth,  made  a  pastoral  visit  to  his  Newport  flock,  which  had  not 
yet  formally  surrendered  him  to  Yale  College.  The  term  of  his 
visit  included  "  the  dark  day,"  which  he  describes  minutely,  and 
with  more  of  scientific  than  of  superstitious  inclination.  His 
description  of  the  devastated  town  and  desecrated  church  is  full 
of  interest.  He  preached  two  Sundays,  and  on  the  afternoon  of 
the  second,  May  28th,  he  baptized  the  infant  son  of  his  friends, 
William  and  Lucy  Channing-. 

2  William  Ellery ;  Walter,  a  much-valued  Boston  physician  of 
literary  and  aesthetic  tastes,  born  1786  ;  Edward  Tyrrel,  Har- 
vard Professor  of  Rhetoric,  who  exerted  a  profound  influence  on 
a  generation  of  writers,  sometime  editor  and  often  contributor  to 
the  North  American  Review,  born  1790.  An  older  brother,  Francis, 
who  graduated  from  Harvard  in  1794  and  died  in  1810,  was 
esteemed  by  his  brothers  and  friends  as  the  most  gifted  of  the 
family.  William  Henry  Channing,  only  son  of  Francis,  published 
in  1848  the  biography  of  Dr.  Channing,  which  is  my  richest 
mine.  His  own  biography,  written  by  0.  B.  Frothingham,  was 
published  in  1886.  Bom  in  1810,  he  died  in  1884.  His  cousin, 
"  Ellery  Channing  "  (William  Ellery),  of  Concord,  a  poet  of  some 
perfect  poems,  many  noble  passages,  and  a  few  immortal  lines, 
born  1818,  died  1901,  was  son  of  Dr.  Walter  Channing.  He  was 
Thoreau's  intimate  friend  and  biographer.  Dr.  W.  E.  Chan- 
ning's  son,  William  Francis,  recently  dead,  was  a  man  of  admira- 
ble parts,  a  distinguished  inventor  and  eager  social  reformer. 
His  daughter  Eva  is  well  known  in  Boston  on  educational  and 
other  lines.    His  daughter  Grace  Ellery  Channing-Stetson  is  a 


6  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

distinguished  reputation.  I  have  seen  the  record 
of  William's  birth,  made  by  his  father  with  quick 
haste  in  the  family  Bible,^  with  no  possible  pre- 
science that  the  name  he  wrote  would  be 

"  Sweeter  than  honey  to  the  lips  of  men." 

The  child  came  of  good  stock  on  both  sides  of 
the  house,  being  allied  on  the  maternal  side  with 
the  Cabots,  Lees,  Jacksons,  Lowells ;  on  the  pa- 
ternal with  the  Gibbs,  Ellery,  Dana,  and  Allston 
families,  "  the  glories  of  whose  blood  and  state  " 
are  not  to  be  despised.  The  father,  William 
Channing,  was  the  son  of  John  Channing,  a  New- 
port merchant,  whose  fortunes,  generally  prosper- 
ous, at  last  came  to  grief.  John  married  the  widow 
Robinson,  whose  maiden  name  was  Mary  Chalo- 
ner,  and  she,  after  his  death,  kept  a  little  shop  for 
the  maintenance  of  her  family,  between  one  cus- 
tomer and  another  her  bright  needles  knitting  up 
"the  ravelled  sleave  of  care,"  her  old-fashioned 
dignity  and  courtesy  combining  with  her  cheerful 
energy  to  win  for  her  a  sincere,  if  sometimes 
amused,  respect.    Her  husband's  father  was  another 

poet  who  has  written  some  very  beautiful  things.  Edward  Chan- 
ning, the  present  historian  and  Harvard  professor,  born  1856,  is 
the  youngest  son  of  Ellery  Channing,  the  Concord  poet,  who  mar- 
ried a  sister  of  Margaret  Fuller.  But  I  must  arbitrarily  break 
off  the  lengthening  roll  at  the  name  of  Elizabeth  P.  Channing,  a 
thoughtful  essayist,  daughter  of  the  Rev.  George  Channing,  who 
was  Dr.  Channing's  youngest  brother  except  Edward,  and  out- 
lived the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  doctor's  birth. 

1  Some  twenty  years  since,  when  I  saw  it,  it  was  in  the  posses- 
sion of  Professor  W.  C.  Russell,  a  nephew  of  Dr.  Channing,  at 
the  time  acting  president  of  Cornell  University. 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  7 

John  Channing,  the  first  American  Channing 
known  to  the  genealogists,  who  came  from  Dorset- 
shire, Eng.,  in  1711.  On  the  same  vessel  with  him 
came  Mary  Antram.  Either  they  were  mutually 
pledged  when  they  set  out,  or  the  long  voyage 
afforded  such  conditions  for  a  successful  courtship 
as  could  hardly  be  escaped.  It  is  certain  that  they 
were  married  soon  after  their  arrival  in  Boston. 

William  Channing,  Dr.  Channing' s  father,  was 
born  in  Newport,  June  11,  1751,  and  graduated 
from  Princeton  College,  N.  J.,  in  1769.  Reading 
law  in  Providence,  he  began  its  practice  in  New- 
port in  1771,  and  two  years  later  married  Lucy 
EUery.^  With  much  professional  ability,  his  in- 
clination to  politics  may  have  done  something  to 
qualify  his  success.  A  large  family  had  the  same 
effect,  and,  at  his  death  in  1793,  he  had  done 
little  towards  amassing  a  fortune,  or  even  a  com- 
petency. Yet  he  was  an  official  pluralist,  being  at 
the  same  time  attorney-general  of  the  State  and 
United  States  district  attorney.  His  son's  recol- 
lections of  him  were  among  the  pleasantest  of  his 
early  years.  He  was  so  much  attached  to  Prince- 
ton, that  he  thought  to  send  William  there,  and 
it  is  interesting  to  imagine  what  a  difference  for 
him  and  many  others  the  hyper-orthodox  influences 
would  have  made.      His  character  was   sincerely 

1  At  the  time  of  William's  birth,  the  house  occupied  by  his 
parents  was  that  which  is  now  24  School  Street,  and  serves  the 
uses  of  a  Home  for  Friendless  Children.  There  is  a  g-ood  picture 
of  it  in  Charles  T.  Brooks's  Channing :  A  Centennial  Memory. 


8  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

religious,  and  he  was  devoted  to  the  interests  of 
the  local  Congregational  church.  He  was  particu- 
larly active  in  restoring  its  meeting-house,  which 
the  British  troops  had  occupied  and  wantonly  de- 
faced, to  the  uses  of  public  worship.  His  reli- 
gious sentiments  were  marked  by  a  liberality  that 
was  in  some  degree  prophetic  of  his  son's  liberal 
preeminence.  His  relations  with  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles, 
at  one  time  his  minister,  contributed  to  his  mental 
breadth.  Newport  was  much  given  to  profanity, 
but  the  father  had  for  this  habit  a  particular  ab- 
horrence. "  I  recollect  with  gratitude,"  says  Wil- 
liam, "  the  impression  he  made  on  my  own  mind. 
I  owed  it  to  him,  that,  though  living  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  this  vice,  no  profane  word  ever  passed 
my  lips."  Genial,  though  dignified  and  impressive, 
his  style  and  manner  were  described  as  "  melliflu- 
ous "  by  a  professional  fi'iend.  William  neverthe- 
less recalled  a  burst  of  indignation  so  vehement 
as  to  drive  him  from  the  court-house  in  a  spasm 
of  fear.  He  was  a  gentle  boy,  and  unused  to 
seeing  his  father  in  his  ''  Ercles'  vein."  A  hap- 
pier experience  was  his  being  present.  May  29, 
1790,  at  the  Rhode  Island  convention,  which 
adopted  the  national  Constitution  of  1787.  He 
never  forgot  the  enthusiasm  of  the  moment,  nor 
his  father's  happiness   in  the  event.^     The  elder 

^  It  should  be  remembered  tbat  Rhode  Island  was  so  tardy  in 
her  adoption  of  the  Constitution  that  she  came  near  to  losing 
the  distinction  of  being  one  of  "  the  original  thirteen."  Vermont 
was  close  upon  her  heels. 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  9 

Channing  was  warmly  sympathetic  with  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  French  Revolution,  but  by  the  exe- 
cution of  Louis  XVI.  his  hopes  were  overclouded, 
not  to  reemerge.  The  grandfather,  following  the 
local  habit  of  his  generation,  had  domestic  slaves, 
and  it  was  a  grief  to  Dr.  Channing's  memory  that 
his  father  had  no  sensibility  to  the  evil  done. 
These  slaves  were  set  free  soon  after  the  Revolu- 
tionary war,  and  Dr.  Channing  had  the  pleasure  of 
remembering  how  kind  his  father  was  to  them  in 
their  "  bewildering  freedom."  One  of  the  scanty 
pleasures  of  the  boy's  life  was  admission  to  his 
father's  office  when  the  choir  gathered  there  to 
practise  the  Sunday  hymns  in  which  the  father 
took  great  interest.  He  also  held  the  faith  of 
Bacon,  that  gardening  is  the  purest  of  all  plea- 
sures. Not  content  with  one  garden,  he  had  two, 
and  in  these  he  cultivated  a  great  variety  of 
plants  and  vegetables,  the  latter  doing  much  to 
make  his  table  liberal  for  his  family  and  the 
friends  to  whom  he  extended  a  hospitality  which 
was  perhaps  too  generous  for  his  means.  For  all 
the  benignity  of  his  face  and  voice,  he  was  too 
observant  of  the  traditional  proprieties  to  have 
any  real  comradeship  with  his  children,  and  his 
discipline,  if  less  impulsive  than  the  mother's,  was 
not  less  severe. 

The  mother's  father,  William  Ellery,^  was  a  man 
of  more   engaging   qualities.     Born    in  1727,  he 

1  See  Life  by  Edward  Tyrrel  Channiug  in  Sparks's  American 
Biographies. 


10  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

made  an  early  marriage  with  Ann  Remington,  of 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  a  woman  who  looked  well  to  the 
ways  of  her  house,  and  was  cheerfully  devoted  to 
her  husband's  and  her  children's  happiness.  She 
died  in  1764,  while  the  older  of  the  children  were 
stiU  young,  and  for  more  than  fifty  years  her  hus- 
band kept  her  memory  green  in  reverent  loneliness. 
In  the  first  years  of  his  married  life  his  habits  were 
convivial,  but  he  at  once  mended  them  when  he 
found  that  his  wife  had  recorded  in  her  almanac 
her  tender  gratitude  for  an  evening  he  had  spent 
at  home.  There  could  have  been  little  virulence 
in  a  disease  that  could  be  cured  by  a  remedy  so 
simple,  taken  once  for  all.  He  wrote  a  brief  auto- 
biography which  is  remarkable  for  its  blended 
self-esteem  and  careful  modesty.  Looking  back 
over  his  life,  he  found  that  he  had  been  "  a  dab- 
bler "  when  he  might  have  been  a  skilful  physician 
or  attorney.     He  wrote,  — 

I  have  been  a  clerk  of  a  court,  a  quack  lawyer,  a 
member  of  Congress,  one  of  the  lords  of  the  admiralty, 
a  judge,  a  loan  officer,  and  finally  a  collector  of  the  cus- 
toms, and  thus,  not  without  many  difficulties,  but  as 
honestly,  thank  God,  as  most  men,  I  have  got  through 
the  journey  of  a  varied  and  sometimes  anxious  fife. 

His  commercial  prospects  were  ruined  by  the 
embarrassments  growing  out  of  British  trade  re- 
strictions. In  1770  he  began  the  practice  of  the 
law,  and  simultaneously  he  became  one  of  the  most 
ardent  of  the  "  Sons  of  Liberty,"  and  of  "  those 
active  spirits  who  were  preparing  themselves  and 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  11 

the  people  for  a  separation  from  the  mother  coun- 
try." So  distinguished  was  the  part  he  played 
upon  this  memorable  scene,  that  he  was  sent,  with 
Stephen  Hopkins,  of  more  venerable  fame,  to 
represent  Rhode  Island  in  the  Congress  which,  on 
July  2,  1776,  resolved  upon  the  independence  of 
the  colonies,  and  two  days  later  gave  the  reasons 
for  their  actions  in  a  declaration,  which,  after  a 
century  and  more  of  good  repute,  has  recently 
excited  the  suspicions  of  our  progressive  politicians 
and  divines.  Eight  years  in  Congress  secured 
him  a  delightful  intimacy  with  influential  men, 
and  his  wit  and  raillery  endeared  him  to  them  and 
many  others  as  a  companion  to  be  greatly  prized. 
Yet  there  seems  to  be  a  defect  of  humor  in  some 
of  the  comments  that  he  makes  on  his  own  char- 
acter.    For  example, — 

His  very  kindness  and  gentleness  had  none  of  the 
inertness  of  mere  good  temper,  but  were  animated  by 
an  active  cherished  principle  of  love,  which  discrimi- 
nated its  objects,  and  was  all  alive  for  the  happiness  of 
others. 

All  this  may  have  been  well  deserved,  but  it 
would  have  come  with  better  grace  from  some 
other  person.  So,  too,  the  testimony  to  the  hon- 
esty and  fairness  of  his  mind  as  the  great  distinc- 
tion of  his  character,  and  its  most  satisfactory 
explanation.  Yet  these  qualities  were  recognized 
by  the  grandson  who  bore  his  name  as  unques- 
tionably real,  and  the  correspondence  of  the  two 
men,  continued  till  past  Channing's  middle  life,  was 


12  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

always  valued  by  Channing  as  a  means  of  better 
insight  into  the  deep  things  of  morals  and  religion. 
Mr.  Ellery  lived  to  be  ninety-two  years  old,  a  ven- 
erated friend  and  citizen,  dying  in  1820  in  the 
town  where  he  was  born. 

His  daughter,  Lucy,  Channing' s  mother,  was  a 
little  woman,  destined  in  this  respect  to  set  the 
seal  of  her  physical  character  upon  her  son.  Her 
face,  as  painted  by  Allston,i  is  also  much  like  his, 
but  with  a  difference,  being  hard  and  cold  where 
his  was  mild  and  luminous.  The  engraver  may 
have  been  unfaithful  to  the  artist,  or  the  artist  to 
his  subject.  She  made  the  most  of  her  inches 
by  her  erect  carriage  and  elastic  motion.  Her 
mind  was  quick  and  versatile,  and  her  speech  had 
a  touch  of  Saxon  simplicity  and  quaintness  which 
made  her  formidable  to  pretenders  and  to  evil- 
doers. The  "  rough  nobleness "  ascribed  to  her 
by  her  nephew,  William  Henry  Channing,  was,  I 
infer,  sometimes  conspicuously  rough.  Hers  was 
not,  he  says,  a  tranquil  temperament,  and  to  smooth 
its  ruffled  waters  was  an  office  to  which  her  more 
placid  husband  was  frequently  called.  "  Don't 
trouble  yourself,  Lucy  ;  I  will  make  all  smooth," 
was  a  familiar  household  note.  Without  his  help 
and  with  the  increasing  care  and  worry  that  his 
death  involved,  her  temper  possibly  took  on  a 
sharper  edge.  Whatever  the  necessary  qualifica- 
tions, she  was  a  woman  of  the  most  generous  im- 
pulses, and  the  most  loving  heart.     Her  son's  trib- 

^  See  Brooks's  Channing  :  A  Centennial  Memory. 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  13 

ute  to  her  worth  was  written  when  he  had  made  full 
proof  of  her  goodness.  She  lived  to  see  him  past 
his  fiftieth  year,  and  attaining  to  the  full  measure 
of  his  power,  though  hardly  to  the  consummation 
of  his  fame. 

The  most  remarkable  trait  in  my  mother's  character 
was  the  rectitude  and  simpHcity  of  her  mind.  Perhaps 
I  have  never  known  her  equal  in  this  respect.  She 
was  true  in  thought,  word,  and  life.  She  had  the  firm- 
ness to  see  the  truth,  to  speak  it,  to  act  upon  it.  She 
was  direct  in  judgment  and  conversation,  and  in  my 
long  intercourse  with  her  I  cannot  recall  one  word  or 
action  betraying  the  slightest  insincerity.  She  had 
keen  insight  into  character.  She  was  not  to  be  imposed 
upon  by  others,  and,  what  is  rarer,  she  practised  no 
imposition  upon  her  own  mind.  She  saw  things,  per- 
sons, events,  as  they  were,  and  spoke  of  them  by  their 
right  names.  Her  partialities  did  not  blind  her,  even 
to  her  children.  Her  love  was  without  illusion.  She 
recognized,  unerringly  and  with  dehght,  fairness,  hon- 
esty, genuine  uprightness,  and  shrunk  as  by  instinct 
from  everything  specious,  the  factitious  in  character, 
and  plausible  in  manners. 

It  was  a  fortunate  circumstance  that  the  child 
who  lived  to  bear  this  witness  did  not  in  one  partic- 
ular —  the  body's  health  —  make  good  the  Words- 
worthian  doctrine ;  he  was  not  father  of  the  man. 
There  was  no  likeness  of  the  chronic  invalid  of 
his  majority  in  the  glowing  health  and  active  mo- 
tions of  the  boy,  or  in  the  young  man's  sprightly 
vigor  and  athletic  grace.  Had  it  been  otherwise, 
his  childhood  would  have  been  a  greater  burden 


14  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

than  he  could  bear.  The  boon  of  health  was  cer- 
tainly an  alleviation  of  that  childhood's  conscious 
weight.  But  he  looked  back  upon  no  happy  child- 
hood from  the  summit  of  his  later  years.  He  said 
repeatedly  that  his  childhood  was  the  least  happy 
period  of  his  life,  and  that,  as  he  had  grown  older, 
each  year  had  been  happier  than  the  last.  Possi- 
bly, and  probably,  there  was  some  shadow  falling 
backward  here  from  the  experience  of  his  later 
prime.  The  sober  fact  was,  however,  sufficiently 
deplorable.  He  was  not  a  happy  boy  because  his 
parents,  doing  their  duty  by  him  in  the  most  con- 
scientious manner,  were  not  affable  and  friendly 
with  him,  gave  him  a  stony  formalism  when  he 
craved  spontaneous  affection,  were  of  the  opinion 
that  he  should  be  seen  and  not  heard,  and  that  he 
should  know  his  place.  Then,  too,  there  was  the 
burden  of  the  inherited  theology  and  the  cheerless 
piety  of  the  New  England  Puritan  early  to  solem- 
nize his  tremulous  heart.  Wholly  believing  what 
his  elders  only  partly  beheved,  how  could  the 
child  be  gay  ?  Besides,  his  early  schoohng  was  of 
no  pleasant  kind.  But  the  main  fact  at  this  stage 
of  his  development  was  that  he  was  a  young  ideal- 
ist, and  "  wanted  better  bread  than  could  be  made 
of  wheat."  He  found  it  hard  to  meet  the  require- 
ments of  the  parental  rule,  and  those,  more  exigent, 
of  his  own  sensitive  conscience. 

An  aged  relative  remembered  him  in  his  third 
or  fourth  year  as  "  the  most  splendid  child  she 
ever  saw."     Her  memory  made  a  pretty  picture  of 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  lo 

him  standing  beside  his  mother  in  her  pew,  with 
bright  eyes  and  rosy  cheeks,  his  light  brown  hair 
falling  in  curls  over  his  ruffled  collar  and  green 
velvet  jacket,  his  eager  gaze  surveying  the  congre- 
gation with  prophetic  interest.  The  beauty  of  this 
picture  is  confirmed  by  many  recollections.  The 
mother's  delicate  health  sent  him  to  school  at  such 
an  early  age  that  an  old  colored  servant  often  took 
him  thither  in  his  arms.  His  first  teacher  died,  and 
he  was  taken  to  see  her  in  her  coffin,  in  the  spirit 
of  the  hymn  my  grandmother  taught  me  when  my 
own  years  were  few. 

O  lovely  appearance  of  death ! 

What  sight  upon  earth  is  so  fair ! 
Not  all  the  gay  pageants  of  earth 

Can  with  a  dead  body  compare. 

The  impression  which  the  boy  got  was  so  strong 
that  the  recollection  of  it  always  remained  with 
him.  So  did  that  of  his  next  mistress,  as  well  it 
might,  for  the  sceptre  of  her  autocracy  was  a  long 
stick  or  fishing-pole,  with  which  she  could  keep  in 
touch  with  the  remotest  scholar  in  the  room.  So 
agile  was  it  that  it  seemed,  at  least  to  one  imagi- 
native boy,  to  be  gifted  with  sight  and  hearing. 
It  beset  the  delinquent  behind  and  before,  and 
there  was  no  escape  from  it.  One  teacher  did  her 
best  to  spoil  him  by  holding  him  up  as  a  model, 
saying  to  the  bad  boys,  "  I  wish  in  my  heart  you 
were  like  William  Channing !  "  Later  he  went 
to  Mr.  Rogers,  who  kept  a  day  and  boarding- 
school  of  such  repute  that  boys  came  to  it  from  a 


16  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

distance  ;  some  from  the  far  South.  Flogging  was 
the  regular  discipline,  and  William  seems  to  have 
suffered  with  the  rest.  The  infliction  outraged  his 
sense  of  honor  and  helped  to  form  in  him  a  life- 
long sentiment  of  opposition  to  all  corporal  pun- 
ishments of  his  fellow  creatures,  young  or  old. 
That  the  girls  never  got  a  "  clapping  "  gave  him 
his  first  sense  of  the  peculiar  sacredness  of  the 
gentler  sex.  Thus  early  was  its  loveliness  borne 
in  upon  his  mind,  particularly  by  a  little  girl  who 
used  to  take  "  French  leave,"  and  go  dancing  down 
the  street,  her  hair  upon  the  wind,  her  dainty 
hands  making  derisive  gestures  to  the  unhappy 
prisoners  she  had  left  behind.  This  story  gains 
in  interest  when  we  discover  that  the  little  girl, 
when  grown  to  womanhood,  became  Channing's 
wife. 

So  far  was  the  boy  from  being  precocious,  that 
his  teachers  and  schoolmates  were  nigh  to  thinking 
him  a  dunce.  It  taxes  our  credulity  to  think  that 
he  was  ever  "  Bill "  to  any  one,  but  the  story  goes 
that  he  was  particularly  slow  at  Latin,  and  that  an 
assistant  in  his  father's  office  said  to  him,  "  Come, 
Bill,  they  say  you  're  a  fool,  but  I  '11  soon  teach 
you  Latin  ;  "  and  he  did.  Soon  William  was  read- 
ing Virgil  with  delight,  and  he  had  more  aptitude 
for  mathematics  than  generally  accompanies  the 
literary  mind.  He  was  indifferent  to  superficial 
acquirements  from  his  early  years,  liking  to  under- 
stand things  thoroughly. 

There  was  education  out  of  school  as  well  as  on 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  17 

the  severely  simple  benches  and  behind  the  desks 
inscribed   with  proud   initials   and   with  many  a 
mystic  sign.     Much  of  the  home  gardening  was 
done  by  Mrs.  Channing's  boys,  and  she  kept  them 
well  in  hand,  exacting  careful  work,  and  punish- 
ing neglect  by  cutting  off  the  meals  which  ordina- 
rily her  enforced  economies  made  scant  enough, 
a  feast  impossible.     The  boys  were  forbidden  to 
go  in  swimming  except  when  personally  conducted 
by  some  one  who  had  reached  years  of  discretion. 
Those  who  disobeyed  were  detected  by  the  wet  ends 
of  their  hair,  and  the  fruit  of  each  last  disobedi- 
ence was  a  good  whipping.     But  they  learned  to 
swim,  while  William,   an  obedient  boy,  did  not, 
and  by  that   sign  went  sorrowing  all  his  days. 
Eegard  for  his  mother's  wishes  withheld  hun  more 
than  fear  of  punishment,  though  he  had  an  honest 
dread  of  that ;  even  more  as  humiliating  than  as 
hurting  horribly.     Such  was   the  importance   at- 
tached to  good  eating  in  Newport  that  Channing 
said,  "  My  first  notion  of  glory  was  attached  to  an 
old  black  cook  belonging  to  my  uncle's  household, 
whom  I  saw  to  be  the  most  important  personage  in 
town."     Calling  with  Miss  Peabody  upon  a  New- 
port friend,  and  pressed  to  eat  a  piece  of  her  nice 
cake,  he  said,  "  Ah,  Mrs.  Clarke,  its  rich  cake  has 
been  the  ruin  of  Newport  I "     He  suffered  more 
from  reaction  from  this  social  temper  than  from 
sympathy  with  it.     Better  fed,  he  would  have  been 
a  better  man.     We  read  of  an  itinerant  preacher 
that  he  had  two  forms  of  grace  at  table,  suited  to 


18  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

different  conditions,  one  beginning,  "  Bountiful 
Providence !  "  and  the  other,  "  For  the  least  of 
all  thy  mercies."  Doubtless  it  was  a  bountiful 
providence  day  when  Washington  came  to  New 
port  and  was  dined  by  Channing's  father.^  So 
the  small  boy,  then  ten  years  old,  saw  the  great 
hero  plain,2  and  let  us  trust  that  he  was  stopped 
and  spoken  to,  John  Jay  and  other  Federalists 
of  great  repute  were  also  entertained  under  the 
Channing  roof.  But  though  the  boy  was  much 
impressed  by  such  visitors,  and  their  significance 
for  his  later  Federalism  was  appreciable.  Dr.  Stiles 
made  a  more  profound  because  a  more  continuous 
impression.  In  the  Newport  sermon  of  1836, 
when  the  church  in  which  Hopkins  had  preached 
was  dedicated  to  Unitarian  faith  and  worship, 
Channing  said  of  Dr.  Stiles :  — 

To  the  influence  of  this  distinguished  man  in  the 
circle  in  which  I  was  brought  up,  I  may  owe  in  part 
the  indignation  which  I  feel  at  every  invasion  of  human 
rights.  In  my  earliest  years  I  regarded  no  human 
being  with  equal  reverence.  I  have  liis  form  before 
me  at  this  moment  almost  as  distinctly  as  if  I  had 
seen  him  yesterday. 

^  The  day  was  August  17,  or  thereabout,  1790.  When  Washing- 
ton made  his  Eastern  tour  in  1789,  Rhode  Island  was  foreign  ter- 
ritory, and  Washington,  as  President,  could  not  enter  it.  But 
after  Rhode  Island's  tardy  adoption  of  the  Constitution  he  made 
the  State  a  visit  of  courtesy,  arriving  at  Newport  August  17th. 
2  And  did  you  once  see  Shelley  plain, 

And  did  he  stop  and  speak  with  you  ? 
And  did  you  speak  to  him  again  ? 

How  strange  it  seems  and  new  ! 

Browning. 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  19 

His  playmates  called  him  "  The  Peacemaker " 
and  "  The  little  Minister,"  i  but  too  much  might 
easily  be  made  of  the  latter  designation  and  of  his 
marshalling  the  family  with  an  extemporized  bell 
—  a  warming-pan  —  to  occupy  the  seats  he  had 
arrano:ed  for  a  relio:ious  service  and  listen  to  his 
eloquent  harangue.  So  many  boys  have  been 
through  these  motions  that  no  prophetic  character 
can  be  ascribed  to  them.  The  lad's  surroundings 
were  in  general  such  as  to  foster  his  religious  sen- 
sibility. His  father  was  the  main  pillar  of  the 
Second  Congregational  Church.  His  mother  sec- 
onded his  father's  religious  efforts  with  unflagging 
zeal.  Once  a  week  she  opened  the  best  parlor, 
hermetically  sealed  at  other  times,  for  a  Scripture 
reading  to  which  all  the  children  were  compulsorily 
invited,  and  at  which  they  were  expected  to  put  on 
a  solemn  behavior  —  a  difficult  business  when  they 
were  shivering  in  their  chairs  and  Touser  was 
playful  with  the  carpet,  which  the  irreverent  wind 
bulged  into  little  heaps.  The  father's  aunt,  a 
woman  of  feeble  health  and  active  piety,  held 
meetings  in  her  sick-room,  presumably  at  such 
times  as  did  not  conflict  with  the  home  service.  A 
more  cheerful  influence  was  that  of  Kachel  De 
Gilder,  a  strong-minded  woman  in  no  doubtful 
sense,  an  upper  servant  in  the  house.  She  wore 
her  piety  with  a  difference  from  the  common  habit 
of  the  time  that  recommended  it  to  the  thoughtful 

^  There  is  a  mythical  embroidery  of  this  legend  to  the  effect 
that  he  was  also  called  "William  the  Silent." 


20  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

boy.  His  gratitude  to  her  througli  lier  long  life 
was  such  that  we  might  easily  beheve  him  conscious 
of  tracing  back  into  her  faithful  heart  some  of  the 
sources  of  that  happy  faith  which  was  the  inspira- 
tion of  his  maturest  service  to  mankind. 

When  but  a  mere  child  he  was,  he  tells  us, 
"  quite  a  theologian,"  though  he  hated  to  hear  his 
grandfather  Ellery  and  others  "  chopping  logic 
after  the  controversial  manner  of  the  time."  He 
remembered  the  general  tone  of  religion  in  New- 
port as  exerting  an  unhappy  mfluence  on  his 
youthful  mind ;  and,  indeed,  it  was  a  questionable 
environment  which  united  uncircumscribed  pro- 
fanity and  the  Assembly's  Catechism  in  about 
equal  parts.  But  if  there  were  influences  that 
were  doubtful  or  distinctly  bad,  there  were  others 
that  were  distinctly  good,  besides  those  already 
named,  one  of  which,  that  of  Dr.  Stiles,  requires 
fresh  emphasis.  The  doctor  had  left  Newport  in 
1778  to  assume  the  presidency  of  Yale.  But  it 
would  seem  that  his  returns  to  Newport  were  not 
infrequent,  and  that  a  high  value  was  set  on  them. 
His  cordial  relations  with  Benjamin  Franklin  at- 
tested at  once  his  interest  in  scientific  matters  and 
his  religious  liberality.  Dr.  Channing  wrote  in 
1836:  — 

I  can  well  remember  how  the  name  of  Dr.  Stiles  was 
cherished  among  his  parishioners,  after  years  of  sepa- 
ration. His  visit  to  this  place  was  to  many  a  festival. 
When  little  more  than  a  child,  I  was  present  at  some 
of  his  private  meetings  with  the  more  reHgious  part  of 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  21 

his  former  congregation,  and  I  recollect  how  I  was 
moved  by  the  tears  and  expressive  looks  with  which  his 
affectionate  exhortations  were  received.  In  his  faith, 
he  was  what  was  called  a  moderate  Calvinist ;  but  his 
heart  was  of  no  sect.  He  carried  into  his  religion  the 
spirit  of  liberty,  which  then  stirred  the  whole  country. 
Intolerance,  church  tyranny,  in  all  its  forms,  he  ab- 
horred. He  respected  the  right  of  private  judgment, 
where  others  would  have  thought  themselves  authorized 
to  restrain  it.  .  .  .  His  friendships  were  confined  to  no 
parties.  He  desired  to  heal  the  wounds  of  the  divided 
church  of  Christ,  not  by  a  common  creed,  but  by  the 
spirit  of  love.  He  wished  to  break  every  yoke,  civil 
and  ecclesiastical.^ 

The  more  important  of  Channing's  recollections 
of  Dr.  Samuel  Hopkins  are  those  touching  the  re- 
lations of  the  two  men  in  the  younger' s  early  man- 
hood. Those  touching  his  first  impressions  were 
much  less  favorable.  But  the  slightest  contact  be- 
tween two  religious  leaders  who,  differing  widely, 
had  still  much  in  common,  is  too  precious  to  be 
overlooked.  After  Jonathan  Edwards,  with  whom 
Hopkins  enjoyed  an  affectionate  intimacy,  no  one 
brought  to  New  England  Calvinism  a  more  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  interpretation.  Some  forty 
years  ago  Mrs.  Stowe's  "  Minister's  Wooing  "  re- 

1  I  have  in  my  possession  a  number  of  his  manuscript  sermons 
given  to  me  by  his  great-grandson,  Rev.  William  C.  Gannett,  and 
I  do  not  seem  to  find  in  them  the  qualities  which  Dr.  Channing 
found  inherent  in  the  man,  which  only  shows  how  relative  im- 
pressions are.  But  they  are  less  oppressively  solemn  than  a 
number  by  his  father,  Rev.  Isaac  Stiles,  which  I  also  have  in 
MS.,  the  collection  bearing  his  own  label,  "  Chiefly  on  Death." 


22  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

newed  the  popular  interest  in  Ms  character  and 
thought,  with  some  violence  to  the  facts  affecting 
his  domestic  life.^  It  has  been  his  too  exclusively 
known  opinion  thflt  "we  should  be  willing  to  be 
damned  for  the  glory  of  God."  The  fact  that  he 
was  actually  and  very  practically  willing  to  be, 
and  was,  damned  by  many  Newport  gentlemen  and 
traders,  for  his  interference  with  their  business  of 
slave-catching  and  owning,  has  had  scanter  recog- 
nition. Of  his  earlier  and  less  favorable  impres- 
sions of  this  remarkable  man  Dr.  Channing  wrote : 

My  recollections  of  Dr.  Hopkins  go  back  to  ray  earliest 
years.  As  the  Second  Congregational  Church  was  closed 
in  my  childhood,  in  consequence  of  Dr.  Stiles's  removal 
to  New  Haven,  my  father  was  accustomed  to  attend  on 
the  ministry  of  Dr.  Hopkins.  Perhaps  he  was  the  first 
minister  I  heard,  but  I  heard  him  with  no  profit.  His 
manner,  which  was  singularly  unattractive,  coukl  not 
win  a  child's  attention  ;  and  the  circumstances  attending 
the  service  were  repulsive.  The  church  had  been  much 
injured  by  the  British  during  their  occupation  of  the 
town,  and  the  congregation  were  too  poor  to  repair  it. 
It  had  a  desolate  look,  and  in  winter  the  rattling  of  the 
windows  made  an  impression  which  time  has  not  worn 
out.  It  was  literally  "  as  cold  as  a  barn,"  and  some  of 
the  most  painful  sensations  of  my  childhood  were  ex- 
perienced in  that  comfortless  building. 

Only  a  stretch  of  gardens  lay  between  the  Chan- 
ning house  and  the  Hopkins  parsonage,  with  its 

^  See  Professor  Williston  Walker's  admirable  account  of  Hop- 
kins in  his  Ten  New  England  Leaders;  also  his  History  of  the 
Congregational  Churches  of  the  United  States. 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  23 

gambrel  roof,  under  which  the  doctor  had  his 
study,  and  there  of  an  early  winter  morning  he  was 
seen  by  Channing  working  away  by  candle-light  at 
some  gi'eat  thought  that  would  not  let  him  sleep. 

The  most  classical  story  of  Channing's  boyhood 
is  so  familiar  that,  were  it  omitted,  it  would  be 
supplied  by  the  majority  of  my  readers,  but  to 
omit  it  would  too  obviously  diminish  the  complete- 
ness of  my  narration.  Going  to  hear  a  famous 
preacher  at  some  distance,  his  father  took  liim  with 
him  in  his  chaise,  as  if,  though  bent  on  his  own 
edification,  he  had  a  mind  to  please  his  little  boy. 
The  sermon  was  successfully  designed  to  harrow  up  ^^ 
the  feelings  with  a  vivid  description  of  man's  fallen 
state  and  the  awful  penalties  attaching  to  his  im- 
penitent condition.  "  In  the  view  of  the  speaker, 
a  curse  seemed  to  rest  on  the  earth  and  darkness 
and  horror  to  veil  the  face  of  nature ; "  and  the 
boy  entered  into  this  view  with  ready  sympathy 
and  assumed  that  all  who  heard  the  preacher  must 
be  equally  impressed.  He  was  confirmed  in  this 
opinion  when  his  father  upon  leaving  the  church 
said  to  an  acquaintance  or  stranger  accosting  him, 
"  Sound  doctrine,  sir."  "  It  is  aU  true,  then,"  re- 
flected the  boy,  and  his  heart  became  like  lead. 
As  they  started  homeward  he  tried  to  speak  about 
these  dreadful  things,  but  the  words  stuck  in  his 
throat.  Moreover  the  father's  silence  made  the 
boy  think  that  he,  too,  was  overwhelmed.  But  pre- 
sently the  father  began  to  whistle,  —  an  incon- 
ceivable and  startling  incongruity.    Worse  still,  on 


24  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

getting  home,  he  said  nothing  about  the  sermon, 
but,  putting  his  feet  in  slippers,  sat  down  before 
the  open  fire,  the  mere  sight  of  which  should  have 
been  terribly  ominous,  and  settled  to  his  newspaper 
as  if  nothing  had  happened.  Whereupon  the  boy 
reflected,  "Could  what  he  had  heard  be  true? 
No,  his  father  did  not  believe  it ;  people  did  not 
believe  it.     It  was  not  true  !  " 

Here  was  a  lesson  in  the  value  of  oratorical  piety 
which  he  did  not  forget.  He  became  more  and 
more  distrustful  of  the  emotional  ardors  of  religion ; 
more  and  more  exigent  in  his  demand  for  a  com- 
plete sincerity. 

At  this  time,  though  small  and  delicate,  he  was 
well-knit  and  muscular,  quick  in  his  motions,  ac- 
tive in  his  disposition,  a  comrade  prized  by  other 
boys  even  while  they  resented  something  of  the 
censor  in  his  dealing  with  their  profane  and  dirty 
talk.  It  is  comforting  to  know  that  there  was 
some  salt  of  imperfection  to  redeem  his  reputation 
from  the  suspicion  of  being  too  flattering,  if  that 
is  the  right  word.  His  was  a  certain  touchiness  of 
disposition  and  he  was  not  averse  (indeed  he  never 
was)  to  the  exercise  of  his  will  on  others.  We  are 
glad  to  read  that  he  pounded  a  bigger  fellow  than 
himself  for  imposing  on  a  little  one,  and  that  — 
when  a  fight  was  on  between  town  and  gown,  Mr. 
Rogers's  boys  and  the  unwashed  —  his  voice  was 
for  immediate  war.  Also,  that  when  a  whole  dol- 
lar was  given  to  him  at  once  by  some  prodigal  re- 
lation, he  did  not  spend  it  carefully  or  put  it  in  his 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  25 

little  bank,  but  hunted  up  Washington  Allston  and 
his  other  playmates  and  had  what  the  boys  of  my 
own  town  and  generation  called  "  a  regular  blow- 
out." There  was  promise  of  abundant  health  in 
his  good  wrestling,  pitching  quoits,  and  adven- 
turous climbing  to  the  masthead  of  the  brig  or 
schooner  lying  at  the  wharf.  Once  he  came  down 
a  stay  on  such  a  lively  run  as  nearly  to  spoil  his 
chance  of  further  reputation.  He  was  never  at 
any  time  lacking  in  physical  or  moral  courage. 
The  boy  was  prophetic  of  the  man  when  he  begged 
to  be  permitted  to  spend  the  night  on  board  an 
old  vessel  that  was  said  to  be  haunted,  and  prob- 
ably was  —  by  rats.  The  story  of  his  command- 
ing a  company  of  boy  soldiers  which  took  part  in 
the  reception  of  Count  Rochambeau,  and  making 
an  address  to  the  count  which  impressed  him  and 
others  very  much,  comes  in  a  shape  too  questionable 
for  our  belief.  The  day  of  the  count's  reception 
was  March  6,  1781,  at  which  date  Channing  was 
eleven  months  less  one  day  old. 

He  had  a  tender  heart.     If  he  could  not  answer 
Emerson's  requirement,  — 


Canst  thou  name  all  the  birds  without  a  gun 


9 


he  could  say,  with  less  than  his  usual  dignity  of 
form,  "  Thanks  to  my  stars,  I  can  say  I  never  kiUed 
a  bird,"  adding,  "  I  would  not  crush  the  meanest 
insect  that  crawls  upon  the  ground."  One  of  the 
tragedies  of  his  boyhood  was  the  finding  of  a  bird's 
nest  in  his  father's  field,  the  little  ones  in  which  he 


26  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

had  fed  from  day  to  day,  despoiled,  and  the  little 
birds  not  only  killed,  but  with  such  incidents  of 
wanton  cruelty  as  our  modern  lynchers  have  writ 
large  in  many  of  our  States.  His  hatred  of  all 
cruelty  to  dumb  creatures  did  not  begin  with  this 
experience,  but  was  intensified  by  it,  and  it  grew 
with  his  growth  and  strengthened  with  his  streng-th. 
Already  nursing  a  remote  and  solitary  habit, 
there  was  one  place  in  Newport  which  he  loved 
beyond  all  others,  and  to  which  he  went  even  in 
his  early  boyhood  for  an  unspeakable  delight.  This 
was  the  Newport  beach,  which  has  been  more  beau- 
tiful for  many  people  through  their  association  of 
it  with  Channing's  person  and  his  familiar  words :  — 

No  spot  on  earth  has  helped  to  form  me  so  much  as 
that  beach.  There  I  lifted  up  my  voice  in  praise  amidst 
the  tempest.  There,  softened  by  beauty,  I  poured  my 
thanksgiving  and  contrite  confessions.  There,  in  rever- 
ential sympathy  with  the  mighty  power  around  me,  I 
became  conscious  of  power  within.  There  struggling 
thoughts  and  emotions  broke  forth,  as  if  moved  to  ut- 
terance by  nature's  eloquence  of  the  winds  and  waves. 
There  began  a  happiness  surpassing  all  worldly  pleasures, 
all  gifts  of  fortune,  the  happiness  of  communing  with 
the  works  of  God. 

The  emotions  thus  described  were  doubtless  those 
of  his  later  boyhood,  but  the  roar  or  murmur  of 
the  beach  was  from  his  earliest  years  "  part  of  his 
life's  unalterable  good." 

In  his  thirteenth  year  he  was  sent  away  from 
home  to  the  care  of  an  uncle,  Henry  Channing, 


THE  NEWPORT  BOY  27 

then  preaching  in  New  London,  Conn.,  who  was  to 
prepare  him  for  college.  But  this  plan  was  sud- 
denly interrupted  (September  21,  1792)  by  his 
father's  death  of  some  swift  marching  but  obscure 
disease.  By  this  sad  event  the  boyhood  of  Channing, 
which  had  not  been  overstocked  with  the  blessings 
which  naturally  pertain  to  being  a  boy,  came  to  a 
decisive  end.  After  the  funeral  he  returned  to  his 
studies  in  New  London  for  a  year,  but  it  was  with 
the  knowledge  that  the  father  had  left  his  wife  and 
children  with  but  meagre  provision  for  their  sup- 
port, and  with  the  consciousness  that  henceforth 
his  mother  would  look  to  him  and  to  his  older 
brother  for  advice  and  counsel,  and  that,  as  soon 
as  possible,  they  must  relieve  her  of  all  respon- 
sibility for  their  comfort  and  advantage,  and  be 
doing  what  they  could  for  her. 


CHAPTER  II 

CAMBRIDGE    AND    RICHMOND 

A  YEAR  at  New  London  enabled  young  Chan- 
ning  to  pass  successfully  the  Harvard  examina- 
tions and  enter  the  college  in  the  fall  of  1794. 
His  fifteenth  year  was  not  yet  much  advanced,  but 
it  should  be  remembered  that  boys  entered  Har- 
vard habitually,  a  century  since,  at  an  earlier  age 
than  they  do  now,  and  that  the  requirements  were 
proportioned  to  their  years.  There  were  roots  of 
Channing's  life  which  struck  down  into  the  Cam- 
bridge soil,  for  hither  his  grandfather  had  come 
for  his  wife,  Ann  Remington,  and  here,  too  early 
dead,  she  had  been  buried,  and  her  epitaph  told 
the  young  student  of  the  virtues  which  were  en- 
graved more  deeply  in  her  husband's  heart  than 
on  the  simple  stone.  In  a  more  cheerful  manner, 
Channing,  coming  to  Cambridge,  was  coming  to 
his  own,  for  while  there  he  made  his  home  in  the 
family  of   Chief  Justice   Dana,^  an  arrangement 

^  Francis  Dana,  born  1743,  died  1811,  father  of  the  poet,  Rich- 
ard Henry  Dana,  and  grandfather  of  the  lawyer  and  publicist  of 
the  same  name,  whose  popular  and  enduring'  title  to  fame  is  his 
Two  Years  Before  the  Mast.  Francis  Dana,  the  chief  justice,  dis- 
tinguished himself  in  a  long  political,  legal,  and  diplomatic  career. 
He  became  chief  justice  of  Massachusetts  in  1791.    He  married  a 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  29 

which  had  the  defects  of  its  qualities.  It  secured 
to  him  the  advantages  of  a  refined  society,  but 
that  a  less  sheltered  life  would  have  been  better 
for  his  moral  temper,  there  can  be  little  doubt. 
Judge  Story,^  his  most  distinguished  classmate,  is 
our  best  historian  of  his  college  course  and  of  the 
college  in  his  time,  and  he  mentions  that,  as  a 
result  of  Channing's  living  with  his  uncle  at  some 
distance  from  the  college  buildings,  "  he  did  not 
associate  much  with  his  classmates  generally,"  but 
"  drew  about  him  a  circle  of  choice  and  select 
friends."  He  should  have  lived  in  the  college 
yard  and  been  ground  together  with  his  classmates 
in  the  social  mill.  It  seems,  however,  that  he  was 
generally  liked  in  spite  of  his  comparative  seclusion. 
We  are  much  subject  to  the  fallacy  which  im- 
putes the  conditions  of  a  later  to  an  earlier  time. 
We   know  distinguished   men  in  their  full-orbed 

sister  of  Lucy  Ellery,  Channing's  mother.  His  "  country  seat "  in 
Cambridge  was  situated  in  the  angle  now  made  by  Dana  Street 
and  Massachusetts  Avenue. 

1  Born  in  Marblehead,  Mass.,  1779,  died  1845,  second  only  to 
Marshall  in  his  judicial  fame,  only  to  Hamilton  and  Madison  as 
a  general  interpreter  of  our  national  Constitution  ;  father  of  Wil- 
liam Wetmore  Story,  an  excellent  sculptor,  writer,  and  poet, 
Lowell's  classmate  and  friend.  Other  classmates  were  Joseph 
Tuckerman  and  Jonathan  Phillips,  Channing's  most  intimate 
friends  for  the  remainder  of  his  life,  and  Sidney  Willard  (son  of 
President  Willard)  whose  ultimate  distinction  was  that  of  an 
amiable  Latin  professor  in  the  college.  Of  college  mates  who 
were  not  classmates  the  most  notable  were  Washington  Allston, 
Leonard  Woods,  Joseph  Stevens  Buckminster,  Channing's  bril- 
liant rival  in  the  Boston  pulpit,  Charles  Lowell,  father  of  James 
Russell  Lowell,  and  Lemuel  Shaw,  a  man  and  judge  as  noble  as 
he  looked. 


30  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

success,  and  we  think  of  them  as  wearing  their 
present  attributes  when  they  were  callow  youth. 
So,  reading  of  Yale  or  Harvard  a  century  or  more 
ago,  until  we  pull  ourselves  up,  we  think  of  the 
one  college  or  the  other  as  it  is  in  these  last  days. 
But  Harvard  in  1794-98  was  a  very  different 
institution  from  what  it  is  now,  with  its  millions 
of  money,  thousands  of  students,  scores  of  profes- 
sors and  other  teachers,  and  its  immense  scientific 
and  literary  apparatus.  There  were  but  two  dor- 
mitories ^  then,  and  two  other  buildings,  Holden 
Chapel  the  more  inconspicuous,  as  modest  in  its 
appearance  as  if  it  had  not  housed  "  the  Great  and 
General  Court  of  Massachusetts "  only  twenty 
years  before,  when  General  Gage  was  holding  Bos- 
ton down  with  British  troops.  The  number  of  stu- 
dents at  one  time  during  Channing's  residence  was 
one  hundred  and  seventy-three,  and  the  teaching 
force  was  less  than  relatively  small;  the  profes- 
sors, Tappan,  Pearson,  and  Webber,  gravely  cour- 
teous, but  too  unconquerably  reserved  and  staid  to 
encourage  undergraduate  approaches.  The  tutors, 
all  young  men,  had  not  in  those  days  won  the 
reputations  which  they  afterwards  acquired  as 
Professors  Popkin  and  Hedge  ^  and  Dr.  Pierce  of 

1  Massachusetts  Hall  (1720),  HolHs  (1763),  Harvard  (rebuilt 
1766),  Holden  Chapel  (1741).  Stoughton,  torn  down  in  1780, 
was  not  rebuilt  until  1804,  and  Holworthy  and  University  were 
not  built  until  1813  and  1815. 

2  Levi,  father  of  Dr.  Frederic  Henry  Hedge,  whom  George 
William  Curtis  introduced  to  Mr,  Blaine  at  the  Concord  Centen- 
nial celebration  of  1875.     Mr.  Blaine,  with  the  happy  conscious- 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  31 

Brookline.^  Dr.  Willard,  the  president,  set  an  ex- 
ample of  forbidding  coldness  to  the  other  members 
of  the  faculty.  The  Jews  had  more  dealings  with 
the  Samaritans  than  the  students  with  the  president 
and  the  professors  and  their  families  in  a  social 
way.  The  passage  of  a  professor  through  the  col- 
lege yard  bared  every  student's  head  anywhere 
visible  to  the  professor  within  its  bounds  —  or, 
the  homage  failing,  there  was  stern  reproof  for 
those  who  could  not  prove  themselves  ignorant  of 
the  solemn  apparition.  The  segregation  of  the 
students  from  the  social  life  of  Cambridge  was 
complete,  except  for  special  incidents  like  that 
which  furnished  Channing  with  his  social  oppor- 
tunity. 

In   his    account  of  the  college  studies.   Judge 
Story  names,  with  some  slight  qualification,  fifteen 

ness  of  the  man  saying  the  right  thing,  said,  "  One  hardly  needs 
to  be  introduced  to  the  author  of  Hedge's  '  Logic'  "  Whereupon 
Dr.  Hedge  pursed  up  a  little  and  replied, ' '  I  am  getting  to  be 
an  old  man,  Mr.  Blaine  [he  was  then  seventy],  but  I  am  not  yet 
old  enough  to  be  my  own  father." 

^  The  most  beautiful  thing  I  saw  when  I  first  went  to  Cam- 
bridge, in  1861,  was  Dr.  Pierce's  portrait,  that  of  the  venerable 
man,  which  then  hung  in  Harvard  Hall.  See  Dr.  Hedge's  de- 
lightful sketch  of  him  in  Sprague's  Annals  of  the  American 
Pulpit.  He  was  one  of  those  diarists  of  whom  Wendell  Phillips 
had  a  poor  opinion.  He  was  proud  of  his  walking  above  all 
things,  and  having  walked  from  Brookline  to  Cambridge  to  hear 
Everett's  welcome  to  Lafayette,  in  1824,  he  slept  soundly  through 
the  oration.  Dr.  Hedge  imagined  him  saying  on  his  arrival  in 
another  world,  "  Just  "  so  many  "  minutes  from  earth  !  Walked 
all  the  way !  "  One  of  his  daughters  married  Dr.  Hedge  and 
one  Rev.  Thomas  B.  Fox,  and  it  was  my  privilege  to  know  them 
well  in  their  beautiful  old  age. 


32  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

books  and  authors  as  exhausting  the  entire  course 
of  study.  There  was  small  Latin  and  less  Greek. 
He  writes  of  Channing  as  not  excelling  in  any  one 
study  so  much  as  doing  generally  well ;  in  some 
things  by  faithful  drudgery,  in  some  from  sheer 
delight  in  them.  Historical  and  literary  studies 
had  for  him  an  irresistible  attraction,  especially 
English  literature  in  its  double  range  (De  Quin- 
cey's  the  distinction)  of  knowledge  and  of  power. 
Studies  which  in  our  time  would  be  classed  as 
forms  of  social  science  had  for  him,  even  then,  a 
strong  appeal. 

In  Judge  Story's  opinion,  he  surpassed  aU  his 
classmates  in  "  his  power  of  varied  and  sustained 
written  composition."  Now,  as  at  each  later  time, 
his  mind  reacted  vividly  on  what  he  read,  and  to 
put  his  thoughts  on  paper  was  as  necessary  to  him 
as  meat  and  drink ;  more  necessary  as  he  viewed 
the  matter.  His  mature  habit  of  reading  pen  in 
hand  was  early  formed,  if  not  already  in  his  col- 
lege years.  The  semi-annual  packet  from  London 
to  Boston  was  awaited  eagerly  at  Cambridge  by  a 
few  reading  men  and  by  no  one  more  eagerly  than 
by  Channing.  The  importations  of  books  were, 
however,  extremely  meagre,  and  but  one  English 
periodical  came  along  with  them,  the  old  "  Monthly 
Magazine."  The  isolation  of  Cambridge  from 
Boston  was  hardly  less  than  that  of  Boston  from 
London.  The  only  bridge  had  been  recently  buUt, 
and  the  road  leading  to  it  was  of  the  roughest 
description,  often  deep  with  mud,  with  no  regular 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  33 

conveyance,^  and  not  inviting  to  those  inclined  to 
"  jog  the  footpath  way."  The  proximity  of  Cam- 
bridge to  Boston  was  not,  therefore,  an  appreciable 
element  in  Channing's  Cambridge  life. 

Washington  Allston,  with  his  artistic  sense  of 
form  and  motion,  should  be  good  authority  as  to 
Channing's  appearance  at  this  time,  and  he  writes 
that,  though  short  in  stature,  he  was  rather  mus- 
cular than  slender,  and  was  even  athletic,  tiring 
heavier  fellows  in  the  wrestKng  matches  which 
were  the  leading  college  sport.  He  overflowed 
with  animal  spirits  as  with  intellectual  enthusiasm, 
and  sometimes  abandoned  himself  to  unrestrained 
hilarity.  His  laugh  would  have  pleased  Carlyle, 
not  Emerson,  for  Allston  says,  "  It  could  not  have 
been  heartier  without  being  obstreperous."  And 
no  one  invited  it  more  successfully  than  Allston. 
A  joke  with  Channing  was  so  rare  a  bird  that  we 
read  with  peculiar  pleasure  of  one  that  Allston 
hatched  —  a  drawing  in  mensuration  into  which 
the  young  artist  introduced  caricatures  of  the  pro- 
fessors and  tutors,  and  Channing  had  the  temerity 
to  offer  this  at  recitation.  The  professor  had  a 
human  heart  by  which  he  lived,  and  joined  in  the 
general  laugh.  Dr.  Pierce  also  remembered  his 
college  looks  as  those  of  vigorous  health.  There 
was  in  Newport  another  artist  besides  Allston,  — 
the  celebrated  miniature  painter,  Malbone,  whose 
name,  and  nothing  further,  Colonel  Higginson  has 

1  Before  Channing  died  there  was  a  "  long  omnibus "   every 
hour  and  a  "  short  omnibus  "  every  half  hour. 


34  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

economized  in  a  pathetic  novel.  Both  he  and 
Allston  were  Channing's  mates  at  Mr.  Rogers's 
school  in  Newport,  and  Malbone  made  a  sketch  of 
Channing  in  his  Cambridge  days.  It  is  repro- 
duced in  Mr.  Brooks's  "  Centennial  Memory,"  and 
is  interesting,  if  not  impressive.  The  cast  of  coun- 
tenance is  decidedly  Wordsworthian,  and  prophe- 
sies the  meditative  rather  than  the  active  and 
philanthropic  man. 

He  was  interested  at  Cambridge  in  everything 
that  promised  the  improvement  of  his  natural 
ability  in  writing  and  speaking.  Not  without 
patient  effort  did  he  obtain  that  grace  of  style 
which  seemed  to  come  as  easily  as  an  infant's 
breath ;  and  back  of  the  unstudied  appearance  of 
his  utterance  there  was  rigorous  discipline  of  his 
voice  and  the  manner  of  his  delivery  in  all  its 
parts.  His  interest  in  writing  and  speaking,  and 
the  pleasure  he  took  in  pleasing  others,  made  him 
"  a  clubable  man  "  to  a  degree  which  otherwise  he 
would  not  have  attained.  The  clubs  attracting 
him  were  those  which  gave  him  an  opportunity  for 
literary  and  forensic  rivalry,  —  the  Speaking  Club, 
later  called  the  Institute,  formed  from  the  Soj)ho- 
more  and  Junior  classes,  each  contributing  from 
twelve  to  fifteen  of  its  choicer  spirits ;  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa ;  the  Adelphi,  whose  members  gener- 
ally were  looking  toward  the  ministry  as  their  pro- 
fession ;  the  Hasty  Pudding,^  which  originated  with 

1  Its  name,  suggestive  of  the  fact  that  the  club  took  its  plea- 
sures cereally,  also  suggests  the  motto  proposed  by  Sydney  Smith 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  35 

Channing's  own  class  in  1795.  The  Porcellian, 
into  whicli  Channing  was  elected,  was  too  frankly 
epicurean  and  convivial  for  his  taste,  and  he  sel- 
dom or  never  availed  himseK  of  his  membership  to 
attend  its  meetings.  It  is  eloquent  of  his  stand- 
ing in  the  Speaking  Club  that  his  extreme  youth 
did  not  prevent  his  achievement  of  the  double 
honor  of  its  presidency  and  the  delivery  of  the 
valedictory  address. 

Our  general  impression  of  the  college  life  in 
Channing's  time  depends  a  good  deal  on  the  char- 
acter of  the  writer,  who  is  our  informant.  Judge 
Story's  construction  is  less  stern  than  Channing's 
own.  To  the  former,  the  students  appeared 
"  moral,  devoted  to  their  studies,  and  ambitious 
of  distmction."  There  was  an  occasional  out- 
break, but  little  dissipation  or  immorality.  It  is, 
however,  conceded  that  the  drinking  habit  was 
much  more  excessive  during  Channing's  college 
course  than  it  was  a  few  decades  further  on. 
Channing's  recollections  took  on  a  darker  hue. 

College  was  never  in  a  worse  state  than  when  I  en- 
tered it.  Society  was  passing  through  a  most  critical 
stage.  The  French  Revolution  had  diseased  the  imagi- 
nation and  unsettled  the  understanding  of  men  every- 
where. .  .  .  The  tone  of  books  and  conversation  was 
presumptuous  and  daring.  The  tendency  of  all  classes 
was  to  scepticism.  At  such  a  moment  the  difficulties 
of  education  were  necessarily  multiphed.  .  .  .  The  state 

for    the    Edinburgh   Review^  —  Musam    meditaris    avena,  —  and 
translated,  "  We  cultivate  the  muses  on  a  little  oatmeal." 


36  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

of  morals  among  the  students  was  anything  but  good ; 
but  poverty,  a  dread  of  debt,  and  an  almost  instinctive 
shrinking  from  gross  vice,  to  which  natural  timidity  and 
religious  principle  contributed  not  a  little,  proved  effec- 
tual safeguards.  I  look  back  on  the  innocence  of  my 
early  life  with  no  self-complacency,  and  with  no  dispo- 
sition to  exalt  myself  above  those  who  yielded  to  temp- 
tation, and  among  whom  I  doubt  not  there  were  much 
nobler  characters  than  my  own.  But  I  do  recollect  it 
with  great  satisfaction  and  with  fervent  gratitude  to 
Divine  Providence.  Had  the  bounds  of  purity  once 
been  broken,  I  know  not  that  I  should  ever  have  re- 
turned to  virtue. 

The  naive  conclusion  of  this  passage  reminds 
me  of  the  good  woman,  who,  speaking  of  Dr.  Gan- 
nett, Channing's  colleague  and  successor,  said,  "  If 
Dr.  Gannett  were  not  such  a  good  man,  what  a 
bad  man  he  might  be."  It  is  quite  impossible  to  im- 
agine Channing  as  succumbing  to  or  even  seriously 
pressed  by  sensual  temptation,  but  there  are  vari- 
ous passages  in  his  letters  and  journals  which  do 
not  read  as  if  the  passions  which  assailed  him  were 
a  painted  flame,  and  it  may  be  that,  like  many 
another  stern  ascetic,  his  preoccupation  with  temp- 
tation made  it  more  real  for  him  than  if  he  had 
lived  a  life  less  tense  and  strained. 

It  is  significant  of  the  sceptical  tendencies  work- 
ing in  the  community  and  the  college,  that  in 
1796  every  student  was  presented  with  a  copy  of 
Watson's  "  Apology  for  the  Bible  "  in  reply  to 
Paine's  "  Age  of  Reason."  It  would  seem  that 
no  one  seriously  infected  could  be  cured  by  such 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  37 

treatment,  but  Watson,^  thougli  weaker  than  water 
to  our  present  apprehension,  had  some  skiU  in  find- 
ing the  joints  of  Paine's  critical  armor,  which  was 
not  very  closely  knit.  Channing's  friend  hence- 
forth, Jonathan  Phillips,  was  for  some  time  under 
the  influence  of  Paine,  and  completely  so,  while 
Channing,  then  or  a  little  later,  seems  to  have 
given  the  whole  freethinking  school  some  careful 
study. 

The  years  of  Channing's  college  life  coincided 
with  the  closing  years  of  Washington's  double 
administration,  and  the  first  two  years  of  Adams's 
single  term.  Franco-English  politics  divided  the 
country  as  sharply  as  could  any  domestic  question. 
The  Federalists  were  sympathetic  with  the  English 
party  to  the  foreign  quarrel ;  the  Jeffersonian- 
Kepublicans  with  the  French.  The  Harvard  stu- 
dents, mainly  the  sons  of  wealthy  New  England 
parents,  took  from  these  a  strong  Federalist  bent. 
In  1798,  Channing,  who  was,  says  Story,  "  among 
the  most  warm  and  decided  in  his  political  opin- 
ions," procured  a  meeting  of  the  students  with  the 
consent  of  the  faculty,  "  for  the  purpose  of  express- 
ing their  opinion  on  the  existing  crisis  in  public 

^  Zeal  for  ecclesiastical  prefermenfc  was  at  the  bottom  of  Wat- 
son's righteous  indig-nation  against  Paine  and  Gibbon.  De  Quincey 
says  that  he  was  privately  heretical,  and  a  letter  to  Gibbon  dis- 
closes his  real  animus.  In  1791  President  Willard  made  pub- 
lic denial  in  the  Centinel  of  a  charge  that  an  abridgment  of 
Gibbon  was  used  as  a  college  text-book.  The  book  used  was  Mil- 
lot's  Elements  of  General  History.  See  C.  F.  Adams's  Massachu- 
setts :  Its  Historians  and  its  History,  p.  40. 


38  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

affairs."  Channing  made  a  rousing  speecli,  and 
moved  the  appointment  of  a  committee  to  draw  up 
an  address  to  President  Adams.  Story  and  others 
warmly  seconded,  and  the  address  was  written, 
pubhshed,  and  sent.  It  was  Channing's  handi- 
work, and  marks  at  once  the  skill  in  writing  to 
which  he  had  already  attained,  and  the  faults  of 
eighteenth  century  grandiloquence  from  which  he 
would  eventually  cut  himself  clear.  Recounting 
the  ill  deeds  of  France  and  her  American  friends, 
the  address  ^  continued,  — 

We  have  seen  this,  Sir,  and  our  youthful  blood  has 
boiled  within  us.  When,  in  opposition  to  such  conduct, 
we  contemplate  the  measures  of  our  own  government, 
we  cannot  but  admire  and  venerate  the  unsullied  in- 
tegrity, the  decisive  prudence,  and  dignified  firmness 
which  have  uniformly  characterized  your  administra- 
tion. Impressed  with  these  sentiments,  we  now  sol- 
emnly offer  the  unwasted  ardor  and  unimpaired  energies 
of  our  youth  to  the  service  of  our  country.  Our  lives 
are  our  only  property ;  and  we  were  not  the  sons  of 
those  who  sealed  our  liberties  with  their  blood  if  we 
would  not  now  defend  with  these  lives  that  soil  which 
affords  a  peaceful  grave  to  the  mouldering  bones  of  our 
forefathers. 

These  were  good  mouth-filling  words,  and  their 
sincerity  was  shortly  tested  in  some  slight  degree 
by  an  episode,  which  was  the  closing  one  of  Chan- 
ning's college  life.  The  principal  oration  at  Com- 
mencement was  assigned  to  him,  —  the  class  all 

1  It  was  signed  by  170  students,  so  that  the  opposition  must 
have  been  a  beggarly  minority  of  some  half  a  dozen  or  less. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  39 

approving,  except  Channing  himself,  who  insisted 
that  Story  ought  to  have  the  honor.  But  Story- 
preferred  reading  a  poem.^  The  subject  assigned 
was  "  The  Present  Age,"  with  the  condition  that 
all  reference  to  current  politics  should  be  avoided. 
It  seems  that  the  Republicans  (not  yet  called  Demo- 
crats) had  been  handled  rouglily  by  some  ardent 
young  Federalist  the  previous  year.  One  of  Chan- 
ning's  friends  wrote  him  with  incongruous  effu- 
sion that  his  indignation  had  dried  up  the  fount  of 
tears.  "  The  government  of  the  college  have  com- 
pleted the  climax  of  their  despotism.  .  .  .  William, 
should  you  be  deprived  of  your  degree  for  not 
performing  at  commencement,  every  friend  of  lib- 
erty must  consider  it  a  glorious  sacrifice  upon  the 
altar  of  your  country."  It  must  be  good  to  be  so 
young  as  that.  But  some  concessions  were  made 
to  Channing's  sturdy  refusal  to  take  the  emascu- 
lated part,  and  he  got  his  innings  when  he  said, 
"  But  that  I  am  forbid,  I  could  a  tale  unfold  that 
would  harrow  up  your  souls."  Whereat  the  plau- 
dits rang. 

Writing  of  his  college  years  long  afterwards  to 
a  young  friend,  Channing  said,  — 

At  your  age  I  was  poor,  dependent,  hardly  able  to 
buy  clothes,  but  the  great  idea  of  improvement  had 

^  Story  published  an  early  volume  of  poems,  and  that  he  had 
skill  in  the  epigrammatic  form  is  proved  by  the  impromptu 
motto  which  he  made  for  the  Salem  Gazette. 

Here  shall  the  Press  the  People's  Rights  maintain, 
Unawed  by  Influence,  and  unbribed  by  Gain  ; 

Here  Patriot  Truth  her  glorious  Precepts  draw, 
Pledged  to  Religion,  Liberty,  and  Law. 


40  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

seized  upon  me.  I  wanted  to  make  the  most  of  myself. 
I  was  not  satisfied  with  knowing  things  superficially  or  by 
halves,  but  tried  to  get  some  comprehensive  views  of 
what  I  studied.  I  had  an  end^  and  for  a  boy,  a  high 
end  in  view.  I  did  not  think  of  fitting  myself  for  this 
or  that  particular  pursuit,  but  for  any  to  which  events 
might  call  me.  .  .  .  The  idea  of  carrying  myself  for- 
ward did  a  great  deal  for  me.  .  .  .  You  are  in  danger 
of  reading  too  fast.  .  .  .  Walk  out  in  the  pleasant,  still, 
autumnal  days.  Such  days  did  a  great  deal  for  my 
mind  and  heart  when  I  was  in  Cambridge. 

He  was  perhaps  thinking  of  one  day  in  particu- 
lar, when  he  was  reading  Hutcheson  under  a  cliunp 
of  willows  ^  which  were  still  vigorous  when  Wil- 
liam Henry  Channing  wrote  his  uncle's  life  in  1848. 
Here  was  a  favorite  retreat,  from  the  heart  of 
which  he  could  look  out  across  the  marshes  and  the 
winding  river  to  the  Brookline  hills,  and  here,  on  a 
day  of  days,  came  to  him  his  first  vision  of  the 
dignity  of  human  nature,  henceforth,  as  his  nephew 
quotes,  "  the  fountain  light  of  all  his  day,  the  mas- 
ter light  of  all  his  seeing."  He  never  forgot  the 
day  marked  by  this  morning  vision,  nor  the  book 
which  drew  aside  for  him  the  veil.  Such  was  his 
exaltation  that  he  "  longed  to  die ;  as  if  heaven 
alone  could  give  room  for  the  exercise  of  such  emo- 
tion." He  did  better :  he  wrote  a  letter  to  a  young 
lady,  the  same  who,  as  a  little  girl  in  Mr.  Rogers's 

1  I  looked  for  them  in  vain  September  8,  1901.  They  were  per- 
haps some  of  the  old  willows  which  were  planted  to  make  palisades 
against  Indian  invasion  when  Cambridge  was  first  settled.  Some 
sturdy  specimens  of  these  I  found  on  Brattle  Street,  and  was  told 
of  others. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  41 

school,  had  pleased  him  so  much,  summonmg  her 
to  rouse  her  sex  to  an  apprehension  and  service  of 
his  overmastering  idea.  But  he  never  sent  the 
letter  :  nor  did  he  ever  destroy  it.  He  should  have 
known  Coventry  Patmore's 

Awake,  0  queen,  to  thy  renown, 

Require  what  't  is  our  wealth  to  give, 

And  comprehend  and  wear  the  crown 
Of  thy  divine  prerogative ! 

Hutch eson's  influence  with  him  was  permanent. 
Esteemed  inconsequent  and  superficial  by  some  of 
our  later  ethical  critics,^  what  Channing  thought 
he  found  in  him  was  really  there.  It  certainly 
was  not  the  utilitarianism  or  determinism  which 
Martineau  exposes  that  attracted  him,  but  the 
alliance  of  beauty  with  goodness  and  the  doctrine 
of  disinterested  benevolence.  Another  writer  who 
attracted  Channing  at  this  time  and  long  after  was 
Adam  Ferguson,2  whose  vogue  was  for  a  long  time 
remarkable.  His  "  Essay  on  Civil  Society  "  was 
his  best  book  for  Channing.  What  attracted  him 
was   the  enthusiasm  for  social  progress,  and  the 

^  For  a  not  too  cordial  estimate  see  Martineau,  Types  of  Ethical 
Theory,  ii.  474-523.  Also,  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  56-62. 

2  Whom  Leslie  Stephen  calls  "  a  facile  and  dexterous  de- 
claimer."  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  214-216. 
He  was  a  disciple  greater  than  his  master,  Montesquieu,  to  many 
of  his  contemporaries.  He  was,  with  Wesley  and  Dr.  Johnson, 
opposed  to  our  American  Revolution,  and  wrote  against  Dr. 
Price's  views  on  that  subject,  which  were  those  of  Burke,  whose 
Reflections  on  the  French  Eevolution  were  excited  by  Dr.  Price's 
sympathy  therewith. 


42  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

idea  of  moral  perfection  as  the  central  princi- 
ple of  ethics.  This  was  Ferguson's  improvement 
on  Hutcheson's  disinterested  benevolence,  but  in 
Channing's  thought  the  two  ideas  assumed  an  in- 
dissoluble unity  or  fraternity  which  we  encoun- 
ter in  his  maturer  writings  at  every  stage  of  their 
advance. 

With  Hutcheson  and  Ferguson,  Channing,  be- 
fore leaving  Cambridge,  read  and  studied  Locke, 
Berkeley,  Reid,  Hume,  and  Priestley ;  Richard 
Price,  also,  whom  Franklin  loved  and  Burke  as- 
sailed, with  peculiar  interest  and  satisfaction.  Chan- 
ning has  generally  been  represented  as  a  follower 
of  Locke  and  as  subject  to  the  limitations  of  his 
sensational  philosophy,  but  some  have  found  in 
him  vivid  anticipations  of  the  transcendental  school. 
The  fact  would  seem  to  be  that  what  attracted  him 
most  in  the  sensationalists  was  their  unconscious 
leanings  to  the  other  side.  He  conceived  himself 
to  be  free  from  Locke's  overlordship.  While  read- 
ing Jouffroy's  "  Ethics,"  in  1840,  he  said  to  Eliza- 
beth Peabody :  — 

I  have  found  a  fact  here  which  interests  me  personally. 
Jouffroy  says  that  Dr.  Price's  "  Dissertations"  were  trans- 
lated into  German  at  the  time  of  their  first  appearance 
and  produced  a  much  greater  impression  than  they  did 
in  England  ;  and  he  thinks  they  were  the  first  movers  of 
the  German  mind  in  the  transcendental  direction.  Now 
1 1  read  Price  when  I  was  in  college.     Price  saved  me 
[from  Locke's  philosophy.     He  gave  me  the  doctrine  of 
\ideas,   and  during   my  life   I  have   written   the   words 
Love,  Right,  etc.,  with  a  capital.    That  book  profoundly 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  43 

;  moulded  my  philosophy  into  the  form  it  has  always  re- 
;  tained.^ 

Another  abiding  satisfaction  of  Channing's  life 
which  began  at  Cambridge  was  that  furnished  by 
Shakespeare.  There  was  during  his  Harvard  course 
an  enthusiastic  Shakespearean  revival  in  the  col- 
lege, and  his  share  in  it  was  not  inferior  to  that  of 
any.  The  interest  thus  awakened  was  one  of  the 
constants  of  his  life  when  he  exchanged  tbe  quiet 
and  still  air  of  college  life  for  what  to  him  was 
relatively  storm  and  stress. 

Before  this  exchange  was  made  he  had  chosen 
the  profession  which  in  his  own  person  he  so  much 
exalted  and  adorned.  He  was  not  spared  the 
perturbation  which  so  many  suffer  before  coming  to 
a  stable  choice.  In  his  junior  year  he  was  equally 
indifferent  to  law  and  gospel,  and  took  medicine 
as  ill ;  but  this  shortly  attracted  him  so  much  as 
to  be  a  subject  of  earnest  correspondence  with  his 
grandfather  Ellery  ;  next  law  was  in  the  lead,  but, 
even  while  his  classmates  supposed  this  to  be  his 
final  choice,  he  had  resolved  to  be  a  minister  of 

1  For  able  but  contrasted  views  of  Price,  see  Martineau's 
Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  ii.  439-447,  and  Stephen's  English 
Thought,  ii.  12-15.  Both  find  in  him  anticipations  of  Kant,  Ste- 
phen of  his  "  categorical  imperative  "  and  Martineau  of  Kant's 
distinction  of  the  "  Critical  and  Practical  Reason."  Strangely 
enough.  Price's  objective  was  the  moral  sense  view,  the  moral  ces- 
theticism  of  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson  by  which  Channing  was 
attracted.  But  Channing's  habit,  like  Mirabeau's,  was  to  "  pounce 
on  his  own  wherever  he  found  it,' '  and  often  what  attracted  him 
in  another  was  a  mere  symbol  of  something  more  profound  in 
his  own  thought. 


44  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

religion.  The  freethinking  about  him,  or,  as  he 
phrased  it,  "  the  prevalence  of  infidelity,"  led  him 
to  examine  the  evidences  for  Christianity,  "  and 
then,"  he  says,  "  I  found  for  what  I  was  made." 

But  before  he  could  enter  the  ministry,  a  period 
of  self-support  and  special  study  nearly  five  years 
long  was  to  work  many  changes  in  his  body  and  his 
mind,  to  blanch  the  ruddy  cheeks  and  waste  the 
vigorous  frame ;  to  shadow  even  while  it  deepened 
his  life's  intellectual  and  moral  flow.  He  had 
already  done  some  teaching  (in  Lancaster,  Mass.) 
on  one  of  his  vacations,  and  he  now  accepted  an 
invitation  from  Mr.  David  Meade  Randolph,  of 
Richmond,  Va.,  who  had  seen  him  in  Newport 
and  been  much  impressed  by  his  character  and 
acquirements,  to  become  a  tutor  in  his  family. 
With  Mr.  Randolph's  own  children  there  were  a 
few  of  his  neighbors',  some  twelve  all  told.  For 
a  time  he  entered  freely  into  the  social  life  of  Rich- 
mond, which  was  at  its  best  in  Mr.  Randolph's  own 
house,  at  his  own  table.  Here  came  John  Mar- 
shall, already  a  great  figure  in  law  and  politics, 
and  many  leading  citizens  of  the  town  and  State. 
Channing  was  captivated  by  the  Virginian  man- 
ners. "  The  men  do  not  forget  the  friendship  and 
feelings  of  their  youth.  They  call  each  other  by 
their  Christian  names.  .  .  .  How  different  from  our 
Northern  manners.  There  avarice  and  ceremony  at 
the  age  of  twenty  graft  the  coldness  and  unfeeling- 
ness  of  age  on  the  disinterested  ardor  of  youth." 
The  trait  which  most  attracted  him  in  comparison 


CAMBRIDGE   AND  RICHMOND  45 

with  "  the  selfish  prudence  of  a  Yankee  "  was  the 
less  talk  and  thinking  about  money.  One  is  re- 
minded of  very  similar  impressions  received  by 
Phillips  Brooks  some  fifty  years  further  along. 
Also  of  Thackeray,  who  said,  "  Catch  me  speaking 
ill  of  people  who  have  such  good  claret."  But 
Channing  did  not  care  for  the  claret,  and  concern- 
ing the  dark  side  of  Virginia  he  could  not  hold  his 
peace.  "  Could  I  only  take  from  the  Virginians 
their  sensuality  and  their  slaves,  I  should  think 
them  the  gTcatest  people  in  the  world.  As  it  is, 
with  a  few  great  virtues  they  have  innumerable 
vices."  The  tradition  of  slavery  was  fresh  in  the 
Newport  of  Channing' s  boyhood,  but  there  the 
slaves  had  been  house-servants  for  the  most  part, 
thus  furnishing  that  aspect  of  slavery  which  in  the 
South  has  disguised,  for  many  bland  apologists, 
the  lower  condition  of  those  working  in  the  fields. 
The  Randolphs,  husband  and  wife,  would  gladly 
have  been  quit  of  slavery  altogether.  Channing 
could  write,  "  I  hear  it  everywhere  spoken  of 
with  abhorrence."  Eli  Whitney,  of  Connecticut, 
had  invented  the  cotton-gin  only  five  years  before, 
and  it  had  hardly  begun  to  work  the  miracle  which 
made  Virginia  the  great  breeding-pen  for  the  sup- 
ply of  negroes  for  the  cotton-raisers  further  south. 
Channing,  however,  formed  his  opinions  on  direct 
observation.  To  his  tutoring  he  sometimes  added 
the  distribution  of  the  field-hands'  weekly  rations, 
and  once,  for  a  short  time,  he  was  left  in  sole  charge 
of  these  slaves,  during  the  absence  of  the  Randolphs 


46  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

from  home.      Hence  germinal  convictions  which 
flowered  and  fruited  in  due  time :  — 

There  is  one  object  here  which  always  depresses  me. 
It  is  slavery.  Language  cannot  express  my  detestation 
of  it.  Master  and  slave !  Nature  never  made  such  a 
distinction  or  established  such  a  relation.  Should  you 
desire  it,  I  will  give  you  some  idea  of  the  situation  and 
character  of  the  Negroes  in  Virginia.  It  is  a  subject  so 
degrading  to  humanity,  that  I  cannot  dwell  on  it  with 
pleasure.  I  should  be  obliged  to  show  you  every  vice 
heightened  by  every  meanness  and  added  to  every  mis- 
ery. The  influence  of  slavery  on  the  whites  is  almost  as 
fatal  as  on  the  blacks  themselves. 

Hitherto,  politically,  Channing's  had  been  a 
Federalist  environment.  It  was  now  Jefferso- 
nian.  The  least  questioning  of  Federalist  infalli- 
bility stamped  him  for  his  Northern  friends  as  a 
traitor,  a  red  Republican,  a  Jacobin.  He  made  an 
elaborate  disclaimer,  but  could  not  wholly  clear 
himself,  seeing  that  he  had  a  good  word  for  El- 
bridge  Gerry,  whose  politics  were  Virginian,  and 
had  views  of  a  standing  army  which  are  as  per- 
tinent to-day  as  then :  "  A  soldier  hy  profession 
is  too  apt  to  forget  that  he  is  a  citizen.  .  .  .  An 
army  in  time  of  peace  is  a  hotbed  of  vice."  It  does 
ill  and  communicates.  Worst  of  all  he  wrote,  "  I 
blush  when  I  think  of  the  Alien  and  Sedition 
laws,"  —  then  sacrosanct  in  Federalist  estimation, 
though  Marshall  had  manfully  opposed  them  and 
so  dimmed  for  many  Northern  eyes  the  laurels  he 
had  won   in  France.     But  notwithstanding  these 


CAMBRIDGE  AND   RICHMOND  47 

deductions  Channing's  Federalism  was  still  tol- 
erably sound.  He  made  little  or  no  distinction 
between  the  principles  of  Jefferson  and  those  of 
Danton,  Robespierre,  and  Marat.  He  gets  very- 
anxious  and  resolved  when  he  contemplates  the 
triumph  of  these  principles  in  America :  — 

I  never  will  breathe  the  same  air  with  those  who  are 
tainted  with  the  foul  impurities  of  French  principles. 
.  .  .  With  tears  in  my  eyes  I  will  bid  farewell  to  the 
roof  which  sheltered  my  infancy  and  to  the  green  graves 
of  my  fathers  and  take  up  my  abode  in  the  foreign  land 
from  which  I  boast  my  descent,  and  which  my  honest 
ancestors  left  in  hopes  of  finding  climes  more  favorable 
to  liberty  and  the  rights  of  man. 

Nevertheless  Channing  was  at  this  time  dream- 
ing dreams  of  social  betterment  which  had  much  in 
common  with  those  of  the  radical  French  idealists 
and  their  English  followers  and  friends.  He  was 
reading  Rousseau  with  great  admiration  ;  Godwin's 
"Political  Justice"  and  Mary  Wollstonecraft's 
"  Rights  of  Woman  "  with  hardly  less.  Mrs.  Woll- 
stonecraft's book  he  thinks  "  a  masculine  perform- 
ance," and  on  other  subjects  than  marriage  finds 
her  sentiment  "  noble,  generous,  and  sublime." 
Even  for  her  irregular  marriage  he  pleads  that 
"  she  acted  on  principle."  It  is  even  probable  that 
he  thought  of  joining  himself  to  a  body  of  Scotch 
immigrants  who  were  intending  a  basis  of  common 
property.  Renan's  version  is,  "  The  idea  of  com- 
munism, the  first,  and  consequently  the  falsest,  that 
meets  the  mind  when  it  begins  to  reflect  on  the 


48  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

reform  of  human  society,  crossed  his  mind  for  a 
moment."  But  Renan  concedes  that  "  on  all  ques- 
tions of  social,  moral,  and  political  order,  he  medi- 
tated very  early  and  with  a  great  deal  of  force." 
A  letter  written  in  his  twentieth  year,  which  is  our 
fullest  expression  of  his  social  aspirations  during 
his  stay  in  Richmond,  is  certainly  remarkable  for 
a  boy  of  that  age,  and  also  as  showing  how  soon 
the  main  lines  of  his  ultimate  moral  system  were 
laid  down.  He  says  that  he  derives  his  sentiments 
from  the  nature  of  man.  Here  was  a  charac- 
teristic note.  The  chief  end  of  man  is  the  im- 
provement of  his  mind  in  knowledge  and  virtue. 
Avarice  is  the  great  bar  to  such  improvement. 
The  cure  for  avarice  is  a  community  of  goods. 
The  wants  of  the  body  are  few,  and  the  labor  of 
man,  which  should  be  directed  to  the  improvement 
of  the  mind,  is  misapplied  to  them.  He  is  con- 
vinced that  virtue  and  benevolence  are  natural  to 
man ;  that  the  principle  of  benevolence  is  "  so 
strongly  impressed  on  the  human  heart  by  God  him- 
self "  that  it  may  become  the  conscious  principle  of 
action.  In  all  which  the  voice  is  Channing's,  the 
hands  are  the  hands  of  Hutcheson  and  Ferguson 
and  Adam  Smith.  Selfishness  and  avarice  have 
their  roots  in  the  false  ideas  that  the  individual  has 
interests  distinct  from  the  community  and  that  the 
body  requires  more  care  than  the  mind.  Then  for 
the  cure !  You  must  destroy  all  distinctions  of 
property ;  make  men  conscious  of  their  dignity 
of  mind.    "  You  must  convince  mankind  that  they 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  49 

themselves  and  all  that  they  possess  are  but  parts 
of  a  great  whole ;  that  they  are  bound  by  God, 
their  common  Father,  to  labor  for  the  good  of  this 
great  whole ;  that  mind,  mind,  requires  all  their 
care  ;  "  and  that  the  dignity  of  their  nature  and  the 
happiness  of  others  require  them  to  improve  this 
mind  in  knowledge  and  in  virtue.  In  conclusion 
he  summons  the  friend  to  whom  he  is  writing  to 
join  him  in  his  great  crusade :  — 

We  few,  we  happy  few,  we  band  of  brothers, 

will  unite  our  exertions  in  the  cause  of  virtue  and 
science.  We  will  beat  down  with  the  irresistible  engines 
of  truth  those  strong  ramparts  consolidated  by  time, 
within  which  avarice,  ignorance,  and  selfishness  have 
intrenched  themselves.  We  will  plant  the  standards  of 
virtue  and  science  on  the  ruins,  and  lay  the  foundation 
of  a  fair  fabric  of  human  happiness,  to  endure  as  long 
as  time,  and  to  acquire  new  grace  and  lustre  with  the 
lapse  of  ages.  —  My  dear  Shaw,  I  fear  you  will  say  I 
am  crazy.     No,  no,  — 

My  pulse  as  yours  doth  temperately  keep  time, 
And  makes  as  healthful  music.^ 

His  friends  did  think  him  crazy  or  inclined  that 
way.  His  brother  Francis,  for  whom  he  had  the 
warmest  admiration,  wrote  him,  "  You  know  no- 
thing of  yourself.  You  talk  of  your  apathy  and 
stoicism,  and  you  are  the  baby  of  your  emotions, 
and  dandled  by  them  without  any  chance  of  being 
weaned."  Other  correspondents  poked  fun  at  his 
exalted  views  in  a  manner  that  must  have  hurt  the 

1  The  whole  letter  should  be  read  in  the  Memoir,  i.  111-116. 


50  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

young  enthusiast  a  good  deal.  His  grandfather 
EUery  used  the  opprobrium  of  French  influence  to 
dam  the  swelling  flood.  Eventually  this  subsided, 
but  it  left  behind  it  a  deposit  into  which  the  seeds 
of  social  theory  and  aspiration  always  fell  as  into 
good  ground.  Brook  Farm  got  a  better  hearing 
because  of  those  early  hopes  and  dreams.  His 
nephew  characteristically  questions  whether  his 
influence  would  not  have  been  wider  and  deeper 
if  the  realization  of  these  had  been  the  engrossing 
purpose  of  his  whole  career. 

Meantime  he  was  reacting  from  the  Gallican 
criticism  of  Christianity  which  was  rife  about  him 
to  a  conservative  opinion  of  its  character.  He 
read  the  "  infidel  books,"  but  a  study  of  Christian 
evidences  convinced  him  that  Christianity  was  a 
divine  revelation.  He  applied  "  to  the  Bible,  — 
that  only  source  of  divine  knowledge,  —  and  to  the 
Bible  alone,"  for  the  principles  of  conduct  which 
should  regulate  his  life.  The  "  happiness  of  another 
state  "  bulked  large  on  his  horizon,  —  a  less  noble 
and  less  characteristic  ideal  than  the  social  one 
it  had  displaced.  The  perturbations  of  his  mind 
were  reflected  in  the  letters  he  received.  One  cor- 
respondent announces  himself  a  "  Price-ite,"  as  if 
that  kind  of  heretic  had  for  Channing  any  terrors. 
Another  commends  to  him  Butler's  "  Analogy " 
for  proof  that  the  mysteriousness  of  doctrines  does 
not  militate  against  their  truth.  Evidently  Chan- 
ning's  tendency  during  the  last  part  of  his  stay  in 
Richmond  was  to  a  more  evangelical  temper,  if  not 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  61 

to  a  more  orthodox  opinion.  It  was  accompanied 
by  a  profound  religious  experience  which  disquali- 
fied, as  a  genuine  "  conversion,"  an  experience  in 
New  England  from  which  he  had  heretofore  dated 
the  beginning  of  his  Christian  life.  This  new 
experience,  in  its  turn,  resolved  itself  into  an 
incident  of  a  process  which  was  the  significant 
matter.  Asked,  as  he  grew  old,  if  he  had  ever 
experienced  conversion,  he  answered,  "I  should 
say  not,  unless  my  whole  life  may  be  called,  as 
truly  it  has  been,  a  process  of  conversion."  But, 
while  his  Eichmond  life  was  a  present  reality  with 
him,  he  could  find  no  expression  for  its  deepest 
part  more  apt  than  "  that  change  of  heart,  which 
is  necessary  to  constitute  a  Christian."  What 
actually  happened  seems  to  have  been  the  infusion 
of  an  element  of  sincere  piety  into  his  morality, 
together  with  a  deepening  sense  of  the  importance 
of  the  personal  influence  of  Jesus  in  history  and 
to  the  individual  soul. 

I  once  considered  mere  moral  attainments  as  the  only 
object  I  had  to  pursue.  I  have  now  solemnly  given 
myself  up  to  God.  I  consider  supreme  love  to  him  as 
the  first  of  aU  duties,  and  morality  seems  but  a  branch 
from  the  vigorous  root  of  religion.  I  love  mankind  • 
because  they  are  the  children  of  God. 

He  found  a  better  reason  for  loving  them  as  he 
went  on,  and  there  was  nothing  prophetic  here  of  ' 
Channing's  ultimate  conception  of  religion  as  "  the 
worship  of  goodness,"  as  morality  flowering  at  its 
top  into  the  love  of  God.     He  reversed,  in  short, 


1/ 


52  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

the  doctrine  of  his  youth.  Yet  not,  therefore,  less 
real  for  the  time  being,  or  in  its  permanent  effects, 
was  the  experience  which  coincided  with  his  stay  in 
Richmond.  A  few  months  before  his  death  he 
wrote  to  a  friend :  — 

I  spent  a  year  and  a  half  there,  and  perhaps  the 
most  eventful  of  my  life.  I  hved  alone,  too  poor  to 
buy  books,  spending  my  days  and  nights  in  an  outbuild- 
ing, with  no  one  beneath  my  roof  except  during  the 
hours  of  school-keeping.  There  I  toiled  as  I  have  never 
done  since,  for  gradually  my  body  sank  under  the  unre- 
mitting exertion.  With  not  a  human  being  to  whom  I 
could  communicate  my  deepest  thoughts  and  feelings, 
and  shrinking  from  common  society,  I  passed  through 
intellectual  and  moral  conflicts  of  heart  and  mind  so 
absorbing  as  often  to  banish  sleep  and  to  destroy  almost 
wholly  the  power  of  digestion.  I  was  worn  well-nigh 
to  a  skeleton.  Yet  I  look  back  on  those  days  of  loneli- 
ness and  frequent  gloom  with  thankfulness.  If  I  ever 
struggled  with  my  whole  soul  for  purity,  truth,  and 
goodness  it  was  there.  Then,  amidst  sore  trials,  the 
great  question,  I  trust,  was  settled  within  me  whether 
I  would  be  the  victim  of  passion,  the  world,  or  the  free 
child  and  servant  of  God.  ...  In  a  hcentious  and 
intemperate  city,  one  spirit,  at  least,  was  preparing  in 
silence  and  loneliness  to  toil  not  whoUy  in  vain  for 
truth  and  holiness. 

Much  besides  the  unremitting  study  and  seclu- 
sion contributed  to  Channing's  physical  misery  and 
the  depression  of  his  spirits.  It  would  have  been 
better  for  him  if  his  opinion  that  "  the  wants  of 
the  body  are  few,"  "  mind,  mind,  requires  aU  our 
care,"  had  been  a  mere  opinion.     But  it  was  with 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  RICHMOND  53 

him  a  rule  of  life.     Not  only  did  he  remain  at  his 
books  till  two  or  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and 
often  till  the  daylight  broke,  but  he  made  harsh 
experiments  in  living,  went  insufficiently  clothed, 
without  an  overcoat  in  winter  weather,   sleeping 
upon  the  bare  floor  in  a  cold  room,  eating  very 
little,  and  that  what  he  did  n't  like.     He  fancied 
he  was  curbing  his  animal  nature,  when  the  temp- 
tations that  assailed  him  were  the  spawn  of  his 
ascetic   glooms.     He   thought  he  was    hardening 
himself  when   he  was  making  himself  frail  and 
pervious  to  every  wind  that  blew.     His  brain,  for 
lack  of  nourishment,  gTCw  weak,  and  from  real 
thinking  turned  to  aimless  revery.     The  printed 
page  conveyed  no  ideas  to  his  mind.    Walking,  he 
dragged  one  foot  after  the  other  for  whole  hours 
together,  observing  little,  enjoying  nothing.     The 
lovely  banks  of  the  James  Kiver  were  his  favorite 
haimt,  and  their  luxurious  growths  of  tree  and  vine 
and  their  too  balmy  air  begot  a  languor  in  his 
blood  and  mind  that  intensified  his  habit  of  revery. 
"  Do  anything  innocent,"  he  wrote  a  yoimg  friend 
from  some  vantage  of  his  later  years,  "  rather  than 
give  yourself  up  to  revery^     He  relates  his  own 
experience  and  goes  on :  "I suppose  I  was  seduced 
in  part  by  physical  debility,  but  the  body  suffered 
as   much   as   the   mind.     I  found,  too,   that  the 
imagination  threatened  to  inflame  the  passions,  and 
that,  if  I  meant  to  be  virtuous,  I  must  dismiss  my 
musings.  ...  I  beg  you  to  avail  yourself  of  my 
experience." 


54  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

An  adventurous  voyage  in  a  leaky  vessel,  a  mis- 
erable little  coaling  sloop,  the  captain  and  crew 
habitually  drunk,  brought  him  back  to  Newport  in 
July,  1800.  He  had  been  in  Richmond  twenty- 
one  months,  a  painfully  eventful  period.  If  he  had 
saved  his  soul  alive,  he  had  made  a  wreck  of  his 
body,  which  was  never  after  this  to  know  a  day  of 
perfect  health.  Could  this  be  so  and  the  informing 
soul  receive  no  detriment  ?  Sound  as  the  mind  in 
the  unsound  body  came  to  be,  surely  the  total  per- 
sonality was  less  effective  than  it  would  have  been 
if  the  boy's  joyous  health  had  been  transmitted 
unimpaired  to  the  young  minister,  and  the  mature 
"  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the 
spirit." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   PARISH   MINISTER 

On  Channing's  return  to  Newport  the  family 
received  him  the  more  tenderly  because  his  broken 
health  seemed  ominous  of  fatal  ill.  Francis,  the 
elder  brother,  had  gone  to  Cambridge  to  engage  in 
the  practice  of  his  profession  (law),  and  William 
found  himself  installed  as  the  head  of  the  family. 
He  had  inherited  something  of  his  mother's  irrita- 
bility and  something  of  his  father's  skill  in  soothing 
her  with  his  embracing  arm  and  his  assurance,  "  It 
will  all  be  weU."  With  his  own  irritability  and 
sharpness  of  speech  and  manner  he  made  a  good 
fight  and  came  off  more  than  conqueror.  His  reg- 
ular duty  was  the  tuition  of  his  youngest  brother 
and  a  young  Randolph  who  had  followed  him  from 
Virginia.  He  busied  himself  also  with  his  sisters' 
studies,  and  with  the  happy  confidence  of  twenty 
summers  set  himself  to  form  the  mind  of  one  of 
these,  more  or  less  fortunate  than  the  others,  and  to 
be  her  spiritual  guide.  He  went  little  into  society, 
nursing  a  habit  solitary  and  recluse ;  introspective 
and  self-searching  to  a  dangerous  degree.  He  found 
"  a  degrading  selfishness  reigning  in  his  heart." 
He  must  avoid  all  levity  and  unmeaning  gayety 


66  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

and  make  himself  an  example  of  the  beauty  of 
holiness.  "  When  I  feel  irritable,  let  me  be  silent ; 
let  me  quit  society."  If  he  "  must  vindicate  his 
character,  let  it  be  in  as  few  and  temperate  words 
as  consist  with  the  regard  to  what  I  owe  to  truth." 
With  much  of  this  kind  there  are  intimations  of 
the  coming  man  :  "  Let  charity  embrace  in  her 
broad  arms  all  sects.  Why  should  I  brand  any 
who  differ  from  me  with  opprobrious  epithets  ?  " 

Meanwhile  he  was  carrying  on  his  theological 
studies  with  impassioned  eagerness,  with  a  view  to 
entering  the  ministry.  A  little  office  near  the  house 
served  him  for  a  study,  and  there  his  evening  lamp 
frequently  vied  with  Dr.  Hopkins's,  a  few  rods  away, 
as  herald  of  the  dawn.  Besides  the  little  office  he 
had  "  two  noble  places  of  study,"  one  the  Redwood 
library,  the  other  his  much-loved  beach.  It  was 
during  this  Newport  interval  that  he  came  to  know 
this  great  companion  best,  and  without  the  morbid 
inclination  of  an  earlier  period,  to  sink  to  rest  in 
its  embracing  arms.  The  Redwood  Hbrary  was  a 
stiller  place,  and  at  all  seasons  a  much  less  fre- 
quented one.  Week  after  week  sometimes  went 
by  without  the  interruption  of  a  single  visitor,  while 
Channing  took  the  astonished  books,  dust-buried, 
from  their  shelves,  and  found  in  them,  like  mummy 
wheat,  the  nourishment  he  craved.  The  library 
had  been  founded  by  a  liberal  thinker,  and  though 
the  Episcopalians  had  gradually  monopolized  the 
management  and  driven  the  founder  out,  as  the 
historian  of  the  library  has  faithfuUy  set  down, 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  57 

the  original  impulse  had  perhaps  insured  a  more 
inclusive  range  of  books  than  it  would  otherwise 
have  had. 

One  personal  influence  was  at  this  time  predom- 
inant, that  of  Dr.  Hopkins.  In  Channing's  New- 
port sermon  of  1836,  in  his  note  to  that  sermon, 
and  in  a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Professor  Park 
of  Andover,  Hopkins's  biographer,  there  is  some  of 
the  most  serviceable  material  which  those  writing 
about  Hopkins  have  discovered  to  this  day.  Chan- 
ning's impression  was  that  Jonathan  Edwards  owed 
much  to  Hopkins  of  his  later  and  nobler  views 
of  religion,  embodied  in  his  "  Nature  of  Virtue  " 
and  "  End  of  God  in  Creation."^  "  I  was  attached 
to  Hopkins,"  he  says,  "mainly  by  his  theory  of 
disinterestedness."  For  this  Hutcheson  had  pre- 
pared him,  little  as  there  would  seem  to  be  in  com- 
mon between  the  calm  philosopher  and  the  impas- 
sioned theologian.  It  is  quite  as  strange,  but  only 
superficially,  that  Channing  should  have  been  most 
attracted  to  Hopkins  by  his  most  startling  paradox. 
He  heard  Hopkins  debate  this  with  a  friend  who 
made  some  critical  objection  to  the  translation, 
"  I  could  wish  myself  accursed,"  etc.  (Rom.  ix.  3). 
Hopkins  said  that  Paul  ougJit  to  have  said  this, 
whether  he  did  or  no.     That  Hopkins  practised 

^  Edwards's  development  was  from  the  idea  of  virtue  as  the  love 
of  God  considered  as  pure  being  to  the  idea  of  virtue  as  the 
love  of  God  considered  as  morally  excellent.  Here  was  a  change 
that  woidd  appeal  powerfully  to  Channing-.  For  Hopkins's  rela- 
tion to  these  views,  see  A.  V.  G.  Allen's  Jonathan  Edwards, 
pp.  318,  321.    See  also  pp.  327-338. 


58  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

the  disinterestedness  he  preached  was  an  additional 
bond.  At  a  time  when  he  was  getting  next  to  no 
salary  he  dropped  a  hundred-dollar  bill  he  had  just 
got  for  copyright  into  a  missionary  collection.  His 
antislavery  preaching  was  further  testimony  to  the 
same  effect.  So  was  his  doughty  Federalism,  which 
did  not  spare  his  sole  male  church  member  and 
deacon,  who  was  an  ardent  Jeffersonian.  Chan- 
ning  was  drawn  to  Hopkins  by  his  perfect  honesty 
and  his  love  of  honesty  in  others  even  while  he 
despised  their  heresies.  He  was  repelled  by  his 
doctrine  of  predestination,  which  he  thought  wholly 
incompatible  with  the  freedom  of  the  human  will. 
When  Channing  preached  for  him  (his  first  New- 
port sermon).  Dr.  Hopkins  smiled  approval  and 
said,  "  The  hat  is  not  yet  made."  It  seems  that 
Dr.  Bellamy  had  compared  a  progressive  science  of 
theology  to  the  making  of  a  hat.  You  must  first 
catch  your  beaver,  and  so  on.  Having  told  the 
story.  Dr.  Hopkins  added,  "  The  hat  is  not  yet 
made,  and  I  hope  you  will  help  to  finish  it." 
And  so  he  did,  much  widening  the  brim. 

Channing  returned  to  Cambridge  early  in  1802, 
having  been  appointed  regent  in  the  college,  his 
office  to  preserve  order,  if  possible,  in  one  of  the 
college  buildings  where  he  had  his  room,  and  have 
an  eye  upon  the  students  in  a  general  way.  If  not 
quite  a  sinecure,  it  was  approximately  that,  though 
probably  less  so  for  him  than  it  might  have  been 
for  some  others.  Meantime  it  assured  him  shelter, 
with  food  and  clothing  sufficient  for  his  modest 


THE   PARISH  MINISTER  69 

wants,  and  abundant  opportunity  to  carry  on  his 
theological  studies.  His  friends,  who  had  expected 
the  boy's  return,  found  that  the  boy,  so  full  of 
health  and  joy,  had  been  displaced  by  a  young 
man,  thin  to  emaciation,  all  of  whose  physical 
elasticity  had  gone,  while  his  mind  had  taken  on  a 
solemn,  almost  mournful  cast.  A  classmate  ^  found 
him  profoundly  subject  to  the  authority  of  Hop- 
kins, but  protests  that  it  was  "  rather  owing  to  the 
influence  of  his  virtues  than  to  the  weight  of  his 
opinions."  The  truth  was  that  Hopkins's  virtues 
had  recommended  his  opinions,  and  these  —  that 
virtue  is  disinterested  benevolence ;  that  moral  per-  ^ 
f ection  is  the  goal  of  human  life  —  were  opinions 
which,  derived  from  Hutcheson  and  Ferguson,  and 
intensified  by  Hopkins,  Channing  made  central  to 
the  ellipse  of  his  completest  scheme  of  thought  and 
life.2 

Little  is  known  of  those  theological  studies  which 
Channing  pursued  under  the  guidance  of  President 
Willard  and  Professor  Tappan.  The  latter  was 
considered  a  fine  preacher  by  George  Cabot  and 
Fisher  Ames, —  men  whose  judgment  was  regarded 

1  Daniel  Appleton  White,  the  "  Jud^e  White  "  of  a  long  and 
honorable  fame.  See  A.  P.  Peabody's  Harvard  Graduates,  pp. 
76-97.  The  sketch  is  painfully  interesting  for  its  account  of 
Harvard  life  in  Channing's  time  :  "  At  least  one  fourth  of  every 
class  became  sots."  "College  work  was  sometimes  suspended 
for  several  days,  the  entire  Faculty  being  employed  on  inquest 
into  some  recent  escapade  or  outrage."  The  account  agrees  with 
Channing's,  as  already  given,  better  than  with  Judge  Story's. 

2  The  same  opinions  constituted  F^nelon's  attraction  for  him 
in  a  preeminent  degree,  though  not  without  some  sober  qualifi- 
cation. 


60  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

as  infallible  by  the  Federalists  of  Boston  and  the 
region  round  about.  What  Channing  thought  of 
the  writers  who  did  most  to  form  his  adolescent 
mind  must  be  gathered  mainly  from  a  letter  writ- 
ten further  on  and  which  may  be,  to  some  extent, 
the  older  man's  correction  of  the  younger's  aberra- 
tions. There  is  general  depreciation  of  English 
theology,  too  general,  with  marks  of  special  appro- 
bation. The  Established  Church  had  been  "a 
dozing  place  for  minds  which  anywhere  else  would 
have  distinguished  themselves,"  and  "  you  will  not 
find  broad  views  of  Christianity,  showing  its  har- 
mony with  human  nature  and  with  the  great  laws 
of  the  universe,  and  its  tendency  to  secure  the  true 
perfection  of  the  individual  and  the  race  ; "  that  is, 
his  own  final  scheme  of  thought.  A  list  follows, 
headed,  too  conventionally,  by  Butler's  "  Analogy," 
with  which  Channing  had  no  natural  sympathy,  and 
strangely  enough  omitting  Butler's  "  Sermons,"  ^ 
which  he  held  most  precious,  coequal  with  the  writ- 
ings of  Hutcheson  and  Price,  another  proof  of 
the  steady  gravitation  of  his  mind  to  the  intuitive 
and  transcendental  point  of  view.  The  entire  list 
is  much  the  same  as  was  commended  to  me  by 
my  teachers  in  the  Divinity  School,  1861-64 : 
Lardner  and  Paley,  Campbell  and  Farmer,  on 
"  Miracles,"  Priestley's  "  Letters  to  a  Philosophi- 

^  My  own  copy  (1792)  was  Dr.  Gannett's  book,  bought  in  his 
Divinity  School  days,  and  enriched  by  a  marginal  comment  by  his 
classmate,  William  Henry  Furness.  I  please  myself  with  think- 
ing that  Channing's  copy  was  of  the  same  edition,  the  liberal  page 
fit  symbol  of  the  liberal  thought. 


THE   PARISH  MINISTER  61 

cal  Unbeliever,"  Watson's  answers  to  Paine  and 
Gibbon  (in  my  day  these  had  gone  to  their  own 
place)  Locke's  "  Reasonableness  of  Christianity," 
Edwards  on  the  "  WiU  "  and  Samuel  Clarke  for 
counter  -  blast,  Lowth's  "  Lectures  on  Hebrew 
Poetry,"  etc.  William  Law's  writings  are  men- 
tioned with  special  admiration,  while  Hartley's 
"  Observations  on  Man,"  "  on  the  whole  an  admi- 
rable work,  is  disfigured  by  a  gross  mechanical 
philosophy."  Here,  as  everywhere,  we  have  his  re- 
pulsion from  the  materialistic,  necessarian,  utilita- 
rian,to  the  opposing  views.  If  the  intellectual  board 
seems  spread  but  meagrely,  we  may  well  ask  our- 
selves how  many  of  the  books  produced  in  our  own 
time  and  which  we  batten  on  with  fearless  joy  wiU 
tempt  men's  appetites  a  century  hence.  Channing, 
though  writing  some  time  ^  after  he  had  left  Cam- 
bridge, confesses  not  to  have  read  Hooker,  or 
Chillingworth,  or  Cudworth,  whose  "  Intellectual 
System  of  the  Universe"  (1678)  enjoyed  a  re- 
markable revival  during  the  Transcendental  period. 
The  exigent  self-examination  of  the  Newport 
days  was  still  kept  up.  Many  pages  of  his  journal 
were  devoted  to  the  conduct  of  his  mind,  the  ethics 
of  the  intellect  being  to  him,  even  then,  a  favorite 
haunt,  where  he  was  much  alone.  It  is  strange  to 
find  him  saying,  "  It  is  my  misfortune  that  I  have 
read  much,  reflected  little."  He  reformed  this 
altogether.     The   bodily  weakness  increased  and 

^  It  is  an  exasperating  circumstance  that  W.  H.  Channing",  in 
the  Memoir,  often  omits  the  date  where  it  is  essential  to  our  right 
understanding. 


62  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

therewith  came  "  a  kind  of  stupefaction  of  mental 
inactivity,  a  weight  of  dulness  oppressing  all  my 
faculties."  It  was  great  good  fortune  that  he  had 
his  brother  Francis  to  walk  and  talk  with.  The 
Mount  Auburn  woods  enticed  them,  not  yet  made 
over  to  the  dead,  and  so  at  once  sanctified  with 
sacred  dust  and  marred  by 

Granite  permanence  of  cockney  taste. 

But  for  this  affectionate  communion,  it  seems  pos- 
sible that  Channing  would  have  gone  to  utter  wreck. 
Drawing  near  to  the  work  of  the  ministry  with 
trembling  heart,  as  if  approaching  a  new  world,  he 
united  himself  with  the  First  Church  in  Cambridge, 
of  which  Dr.  Abiel  Holmes,  father  of  Oliver  Wen- 
dell, was  then  pastor,  "  a  moderate  Calvinist,"  being 
in  this  respect  one  of  the  majority  of  preachers  round 
about.  At  this  time  Channing  drew  up  some  arti- 
cles of  belief,  supposed  to  represent  his  own.  They 
were  notably  Hopkinsian  in  some  respects,  but,  in 
their  views  of  Christ's  nature,  they  inclined  to  that 
Arian  doctrine  of  Jesus  which  figured  him  as 
neither  God  nor  man,  nor  God  and  man,  but  a 
being  sui  generis^  preexistent,  the  creator  of  all 
worlds,  only  less  eternal  and  less  infinite  than  God. 
Approbated  to  preach  by  the  Cambridge  Associa- 
tion, the  ministers  of  that  association  anticipated  his 
gravitation  to  the  Hopkinsian  side  in  the  division 
that  was  getting  every  day  more  definite.  There 
was  some  ground  for  the  anticipation.  "  There  was 
a  time,"  he  wrote  long  after,  "  when  I  verged  to 
Calvinism,  for  ill  health  and  depression  gave  me 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  63 

a  dark  view  of  things.  But  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  held  me  back."  Eeading  Doddridge's 
"  Kise  and  Progress  "  he  "  came  upon  a  prayer  to 
Jesus  Christ."  That  gave  him  pause.  "  I  was 
never  in  any  sense  a  Trinitarian."  What  is  most 
interesting  here  is  that,  in  the  event,  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  was  among  the  least  of  his  objections 
to  the  orthodox  system.  It  was  the  Calvinism  of 
that  system  that  excited  his  celestial  ire ;  its  repre- 
sentation of  human  nature  as  totally  depraved  and 
of  God's  nature  as  much  the  same,  with  its  doc- 
trines of  election  and  reprobation  and  of  the  atone- 
ment as  a  reconciliation  of  a  wrathful  God  to  sinful 
men. 

When  he  began  to  preach  for  one  congregation 
and  another,  his  first  sermon,  several  times  re- 
peated, was  from  the  text,  "  Silver  and  gold  have 
I  none,  but  such  as  I  have  give  I  unto  thee."  We 
have  several  accounts  of  that  sermon,  one  of  them 
written  by  Charles  T.  Brooks,  with  his  eye  on  the 
object.  It  underwent  various  changes  of  a  kind 
that  throws  some  light  upon  Channing's  progress 
from  a  less  to  a  more  simple  style.  It  was  his 
first  sermon  at  Federal  Street  and  also  his  first  at 
Newport.  That  he  did  not  despise  its  youth  is 
made  plain  by  his  preaching  it  a  second  time  at 
Federal  Street  in  1804  and  again  in  1808.  He  was 
making  public  confession  when  he  wrote  of  the 
wretchedness  caused  by  fretfulness  and  anger  in 
social  intercourse,  and  he  was  already  verging  on 
the  heresy  of  Theodore  Parker's  South  Boston  ser- 


64  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

mon  when  he  said,  "  Perhaps  Christ  when  on  earth 
won  the  hearts  of  pubHcans  and  sinners  more  by 
his  gentle  manners  and  offices  of  kindness,  when 
he  ate  and  drank  with  them,  than  by  exhibiting  his 
miracles." 

This  sermon,  and  others  of  like  quality,  with  a 
manner  fervid  and  solemn  to  an  unusual  degree, 
attracted  not  only  the  Federal  Street  Society,  but 
also  the  Brattle  Street,  where  Dr.  Peter  Thacher,i 
who  was  getting  old,  wanted  a  colleague.  Federal 
Street,  as  the  weaker  plant,  naturally  attracted 
Channing,  and  on  February  12,  1803,  he  accepted 
the  call  extended  in  December,  1802,  and  was  or- 
dained and  installed  June  1,  1803.  He  would 
have  had  his  uncle  Henry  Channing,  with  whom 
he  had  studied  in  New  London,  preach  the  ordina- 
tion sermon,  but  in  the  event  he  gave  the  charge 
to  the  candidate,  —  Dr.  Tappan,  the  Harvard  pro- 
fessor of  Theology,  preaching  the  sermon.  Other 
men  of  note  took  part:  Dr.  Holmes,  Dr.  Osgood 
of  Medford,  whose  memory  with  that  of  his  daugh- 
ters has  been  widely  blessed,  while  Joseph  Tucker- 
man,  Channing's  classmate,  and  henceforth,  with 
Jonathan  Phillips,  one  of  his  dearest  friends,  gave 
the  right  hand  of  fellowship.  George  Ticknor,  of 
"  Spanish  Literature  "  and  other  literary  fame, 
never  forgot  the  impression  which  Channing  made 
on  him  on  the  occasion  of  his  ordination :  the  pale, 

^  Father  of  Samuel  Cooper  Thacher,  one  of  Channing's  dearest 
friends.  The  father  died  in  1804,  and  was  succeeded  by  Chan- 
ning's brilliant  rival,  Buckminster. 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  65 

enraptured  face,  "  the  spirit-small  hand "  raised  in 
benediction,  and  especially  his  reading  of  the  clos- 
ing hymn :  — 

My  tongue  repeats  her  vows, 

Peace  to  this  sacred  house  ! 
For  here  my  friends  and  brethren  dwell, 

And  since  my  glorious  God 

Makes  thee  his  blest  abode, 
My  soul  shall  ever  love  thee  well. 

The  different  parts  of  the  service  were  always  for 
Channing  like  the  different  characters  of  Shake- 
speare's plays  for  the  great  poet :  none  of  them 
was  slighted.  There  were  those  for  whom  the 
hymns  and  prayers  were  more  than  the  preaching ; 
"  the  first  hymn  a  service,"  as  one  said. 

The  "  sacred  house  "  on  Federal  Street,  built  in 
1744,  was  already  nearly  sixty  years  old.  It  was 
small  and  phenomenally  plain,  bare,  and  ugly, 
even  for  its  time  and  type.  The  society  had  been 
formed  by  Scotch-Irish  Presbyterians  in  1729,  and 
their  place  of  worship  until  they  built  their  church 
was  a  commodious  barn.  The  church  had  had  its 
historic  moment  in  1788,  when  the  State  conven- 
tion met  in  it  which  acceded  to  the  national  Con- 
stitution of  1787.  The  street  was  named  by  this 
event,  than  which  nothing  could  have  honored  the 
building  more  in  Channing' s  eyes,  or  have  re- 
minded him  more  vividly  of  the  most  enthusiastic 
moment  of  his  earlier  life,  when  he  shared  his 
father's  triumph  in  the  tardy  accession  of  Rhode 
Island  to  the  Union  of  these  States. 

We  must  beware  of  thinking  of  the  Boston  to 


66  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

which  Channing  came  as  being  in  anything  like  the 
present  city,  except  its  general  situation  and  its 
topography  to  a  less  degree.  It  was  far  more  like 
the  Boston  of  1703  than  like  the  Boston  of  our 
time.  The  expansion  of  the  United  States  had 
just  been  initiated  by  the  Louisiana  Purchase 
(May  2),  but  as  yet  the  United  States  were  a 
fringe  along  the  Atlantic  coast,  having  the  Alle- 
ghanies  for  its  western  edge.  Contracted  as  they 
were,  they  were  not  homogeneous,  and  Thomas  Jef- 
ferson, then  President,  knew  less  of  New  England 
than  we  know  of  the  Philippines,  though  in  gen- 
eral he  was  well  informed.  It  was  a  day  of  small 
things,  the  expenses  of  New  York  City  in  1800 
amounting  to  1130,000  ;  in  1900  to  198,000,000. 
In  the  same  year,  New  York,  the  State,  for  the 
first  time  led  Massachusetts  (then  including 
Maine)  in  population,  by  16,000  souls.  The  cen- 
sus recently  com^^leted  counted  25,000  inhabitants 
of  Boston,  about  one  twentieth  of  the  population 
of  the  State.  The  general  appearance  was  that  of 
an  old  English  market  town.^  The  sidewalks  as 
well  as  the  streets  were  paved  with  cobble-stones ; 
a  custom  which  persists  in  many  foreign  towns,  as, 
to  my  sorrow,  I  have  learned.  The  few  oil  lamps 
on  the  streets  at  night  but  served  to  make  the 
outer  darkness  more  compact. 

The  social  aspect  was  that  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  conservative  at  that.    Gentlemen  of  means 

1  See  Henry  Adams's  History  of  the  United  States,  vol.  i.,  for 
these  details  and  especially  for  the  social  aspect. 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  67 

wore  colored  coats  and  figured  waistcoats,  with  knee- 
breeches  and  long  white-topped  boots,  ruffled  shirt- 
fronts  and  wristbands  and  stuffed  white  cravats, 
cocked  hats  (the  more  elderly)  and  wigs.  As  in 
the  Marblehead  of  my  boyhood,  the  streets  on 
Saturday  evenings  were  full  of  boys  carrying  pots 
of  beans  or  pudding  to  the  baker's  oven,  so,  when 
Channing  came  to  Boston,  they  were  full  of  boys 
carrying  home  piles  of  wig-boxes  for  the  better  ob- 
servance of  the  Lord's  Day.^  The  stately  minuet 
was  still  the  evening  dance.  In  the  summer  season 
Boston  rivalled  Newport  as  a  place  of  Southern  re- 
sort, its  antislavery  atmosphere  not  yet  sharpen- 
ing its  east  wind.  The  big  English  dinner  was 
the  king-pin  about  which  the  best  society  revolved. 
This  society  was  as  exclusive  of  Jeffersonian  Re- 
publicans as  freezing  water  of  animal  germs.  A 
lady  of  the  period  said,  "  I  should  as  soon  have 
expected  to  see  a  cow  in  a  drawing-room  as  a  Jaco- 
bin." 

Boston  had,  in  1803,  little  to  show  of  that  in- 
tellectual life  of  which  eventually  it  had  so  much. 
In  fact  Channing,  Buckminster,  and  Norton  were 
the  prime  movers  of  the  new  regime.  Few  could 
speak  French  or  read  it.  Madame  De  Stael's 
"  L'Allemagne  "  (1814)  was  the  first  seed  of  Ger- 

^  For  the  best  possible  description  of  a  social  magnate  of  the 
time,  see  in  O.  B.  Frothingham's  Memoir  of  William  Henry  Chan- 
ning., pp.  9-13,  Channing's  description  of  his  grandfather  Stephen 
Higginson,  a  Federalist  of  the  deepest  dye,  and  an  important 
member  of  that  Essex  "  junto  "  which  bulks  so  large  in  Massa- 
chusetts politics  of  a  century  since. 


68  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

man  studies,  and  its  growth  was  slow.  The  Queen 
Anne  men  reigned  in  literary  taste.  If  Burns  had 
been  discovered,  it  was  probably  by  some  miser- 
able Jeffersonian.  Wordsworth's  first  American 
reprint  was  in  Philadelphia  in  1802.  Of  creative 
ability  there  was  none  except  as  Nathaniel  Bow- 
ditch's  "  Practical  Navigator "  had  set  sail  in 
1800,  and  Jedidiah  Morse,  of  whom  more  here- 
after, had  published  his  geography.  The  best 
promise  of  Prescott  and  Bancroft  and  Motley  and 
Parkman  and  Fiske  and  Rhodes  was  the  local 
work  of  Jeremy  Belknap,  founder  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Historical  Society,  who  died  in  1798. 
There  were  good  lawyers  like  Dexter  and  Parsons ; 
and  Fisher  Ames  was  magnified  in  the  local  at- 
mosphere to  the  proportions  of  a  Burke  or  a  Bos- 
suet.  The  sure  thing  about  Ames  was  that  he 
was  a  political  pessimist  of  such  sombre  hue  that 
his  temper  overhung  the  common  consciousness  of 
Boston  like  a  leaden  pall.  In  1795  he  had  feared 
that  he  might  outlive  the  government  and  the  Con- 
stitution of  his  country,  and  naturally  his  gloom 
had  deepened  with  the  triumph  of  democratic 
principles.  He  complained  that  even  the  Federal- 
ists did  not  appreciate  as  they  should  "  the  progress 
of  licentiousness,"  a  euphemism  for  the  spread  of 
Jeffersonian  opinions.  There  were  perhaps  five 
hundred  who  did  so,  and  perhaps  not.  Within  a 
few  months  after  Channing's  settlement,  Pickering, 
one  of  the  Essex  "  junto,"  was  writing  from  his  sen- 
atorial post  at  Washington  that  the  time  for  New 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  69 

England  to  secede  had  come,  and  submitting  plans 
for  attaching  New  York  to  the  projected  Northern 
confederacy.  George  Cabot,  in  1814  president  of 
the  famous  Hartford  Convention,  writing  for  him- 
self, Higginson,  and  Ames,  Pickering's  colleagues 
in  the  "  junto,"  counselled  that  the  time  for  action 
had  not  yet  come,  but  they  would  nurse  their 
wrath,  meanwhile,  to  keep  it  warm.  It  was  some 
comfort  when  Samuel  Adams,  the  Father  of  the 
Revolution  and  of  New  England  democracy,  died 
in  October,  1803.  So  long  as  there  was  any  life 
in  his  decrepit  frame  the  old  times  might  come 
back. 

Fisher  Ames's  five  hundred  thoroughgoing  pes- 
simists included,  Mr.  Henry  Adams  thinks,  nearly 
all  the  Massachusetts  clergy.  In  Boston  and  vicin- 
ity these  clergymen  were  nearly  all  Unitarians, 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  and  the  more  distinc- 
tive doctrines  of  Calvinism  having  for  them  no 
longer  any  attraction.  Had  Jefferson  been  aware 
of  this,  his  fear  and  hate  of  the  New  England 
clergy  would  have  been  qualified  in  no  slight  de- 
gree, for  his  enthusiasm  for  religious  liberality  was 
even  greater  than  for  political.  But  he  formed  his 
ideas  of  them  upon  the  clergy  against  whom  he 
had  contended  in  Virginia,  men  impervious  to 
ideas,  "  beasts  at  Ephesus,"  whose  fangs  had  left 
their  memories  in  his  shrinking  flesh.  But  what 
we  are  bound  to  consider  is  the  effect  which  the 
political  temper  of  the  clergy  had  upon  the  expres- 
sion of  their  theological  opinions.     Within  a  week 


70  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

of  Channing's  ordination,  the  Rev.  Jedidiah  Morse, 
of  Charlestown,  preached  the  Election  Sermon, 
and  he  said,  "  Let  us  guard  against  the  insidious 
encroachments  of  innovation  —  that  evil  and  be- 
guiling spirit  which  is  now  stalking  to  and  fro  in 
the  earth  seeking  whom  it  may  destroy."  Morse 
was  Calvinistic,  but  his  temper,  a  more  important 
matter  than  his  opinions,  was  that  of  the  whole 
body  of  clergy  of  which  Channing  had  now  be- 
come a  conscious  part.  Dr.  Hedge  has  character- 
ized the  period  immediately  preceding  Channing's 
settlement  as  "  the  dryest  in  the  li^story  of  the 
American  pulpit."  The  impression  made  by  Chan- 
ning's early  preaching  was  enhanced  immensely  by 
its  vivid  contrast  with  the  prevailing  tone. 

Channing  was  fortunate  in  being  welcomed  for 
some  months  after  his  ordination  to  the  home  of 
Stephen  Higginson,  Jr.,^  in  Brookline.  That  the 
kindly  influences  abounding  there  coidd  not  dis- 
perse the  gloom  now  settling  on  his  mind  is  ample 
proof  how  thick  and  dark  it  was.  An  angel  un- 
awares may  be  a  distinguished  and  at  the  same  time 
an  uncomfortable  guest.  "  Society  seemed  distaste- 
ful ;  he  joined  but  little  in  conversation ;  took  his 
meals  in  haste ;  was  retired  in  his  ways ;  lived 
mostly  in  his  study ;  appeared  rather  annoyed  than 
pleased  with  visitors  ;  seldom  went  abroad,  —  de- 
clining, if  possible,  all  invitations  ;  and,  in  a  word, 
was  most  content  when  left  uninterruptedly  to  him- 

^  Son  of  the  Federalist  magnate  and  father  of  Colonel  T.  W. 
Higginson,  in  whose  Cheerful  Yesterdays  he  is  carefully  portrayed. 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  71 

self."  1  And  still  the  awful  register  of  his  intro- 
spective search  went  on.  A  "  subject  "  was  his 
besetting  sin,  and  had  for  him  the  concreteness  of 
Luther's  personal  devil.  If  he  did  not  throw  his 
inkstand  at  the  intruder,  he  did  much  of  its  con- 
tents. He  complains,  "  A  subject  has  been  very- 
injurious  to  me.  It  has  shut  me  up  in  my  room 
till  my  body  has  been  exhausted."  He  must  try 
to  fix  the  number  of  hours  during  which  he  will 
attend  to  a  subject.  His  long  absorption  in  a  sub- 
ject enfeebles  his  mind,  prevents  its  free  action, 
casts  a  gloom  over  his  thoughts  and  produces  pain- 
ful anxiety.  "  Because  doubt  spreads  over  one  sub- 
ject I  ought  not  to  doubt  all."  His  search  for 
truth  was  vain  and  the  laurels  of  the  successful 
seekers  would  not  let  him  sleep.  When  he  writes 
his  uncle  Henry,  "  Every  day  teaches  me  more  of 
my  weakness  and  corruption  and  yet  I  seem  to 
grow  no  better,"  we  may  have  something  of  the 
expected  note,  but  his  sorrows  were  for  the  most 
part  real  enough.  "  I  cannot  describe  to  you  the 
weight  which  weighed  down  my  mind  at  the  be- 
ginning of  my  ministry."  There  was  little  need  of 
the  political  infusion  in  a  cup  which,  without  that, 
was  so  bitter  to  his  taste.  The  depression  con- 
tinued for  some  years.  But  for  the  encouragement 
of  his  brother  Francis  he  would  probably  have  been 
lost  to  his  profession  before  putting  forth  more 
than  the  smallest  fraction  of  his  strength. 

That  some  who  heard  the  young  preacher  found 

1  Memoir,  i.  175-176. 


72  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

him  oppressively  solemn  and  called  him  "  gloomy  " 
is  what  we  should  expect  from  what  we  have  seen 
of  him  in  his  personal  isolation.  Shortly  (1805) 
Buckminster  came  to  Brattle  Street  and  his  more 
cheerful  manner  and  more  glowing  style  attracted 
those  whom  Channing  could  not  please.  Andrews 
Norton  said  that  "  hearing  Buckminster,  one  seemed 
to  be  walking  in  the  triumphal  procession  of  truth." 
Kirkland,  soon  to  become  president  of  Harvard, 
had  a  like,  but  milder,  less  irresistible  attraction, 
while  S.  C.  Thacher,  who  succeeded  him  in  1811  as 
minister  of  the  New  South,  was  much  like  Chan- 
ning, but  of  a  more  genial  spirit;  and  all  these 
men  were  strong  where  Channing  was  always  weak- 
est, on  the  social  side.  But  Channing' s  seriousness, 
his  spirituality,  his  fervor,  the  passionate  earnest- 
ness of  his  direct  appeals,  the  tenderness  of  his 
devotion,  his  awed  and  trembling  sense  of  infinite 
things,  could  not  but  draw  to  him  many  who  had 
been  hungering  for  such  bread  from  heaven  as  he 
brought.  His  congregation,  as  he  found  it,  was 
one  representing  little  wealth  or  culture.  It  soon 
represented  more  of  these  unequal  advantages,  and 
in  1809  the  increasing  numbers  compelled  the 
building  of  a  much  larger  church,  a  good  example 
of  its  kind,  in  which  the  society  worshipped  until 
1859,^  when,  in  the  spirit  of  Channing,  nine  or  ten 

1  After  that  there  was  a  three  years'  interval  in  tabernacles 
while  the  present  Arlington  Street  church  was  building",  a  noble 
structure  in  that  style  to  which  Gibbs  and  Wren  gave  its  most 
characteristic  note. 


THE   PARISH  MINISTER  73 

ministei's,  of  various  denominations,  joined  with  Dr. 
Gannett  in  the  tenderness  of  his  farewell.  Doubt- 
less the  main  defect  of  Channing  in  those  first  years 
of  his  ministry  constituted  his  chief  attraction  for 
a  good  many  persons.  The  physical  immensity  of 
Phillips  Brooks  would  not  then  have  been  counted 
to  him  for  righteousness.  The  passion  for  bigness 
of  all  kinds  had  not  yet  taken  possession  of  the 
public  mind.  The  less  body,  the  more  spirit,  was 
an  accepted  axiom,  even  with  those  who  thought 
the  heavy  English  dinner  a  great  institution ; 
and  Channing's  physical  delicacy  —  the  thin,  pale 
cheeks,  and  the  large  eyes  that  seemed  conversant 
with  aU  hidden  mysteries  —  made  him  appear  less 
human  than  angelic,  a  spirit  visible  and  audible  to 
mortal  sense.  But  Channing  was  himself  already 
cured  of  his  conceit  that  body  and  spirit  were  op- 
posing terms  and  that  he  must  build  his  spiritual 
temple  on  the  ruins  of  his  bodily  frame.  From 
his  earlier  misconception,  — 

This  frame  so  weak,  sharp  sickness'  hue, 
And  this  pale  cheek  God  loves  in  you,  — 

he  reacted  manfully,  hating  the  valetudinarian  habit 
from  which  he  could  not  shake  himself  free,  and 
trying  hard  to  guard  himself  against  the  dangers 
of  which  he  was  as  well  aware  as  Dr.  Johnson  or 
Mr.  Emerson,  though  he  left  us  no  dictum  so  con- 
cise as  the  latter's,  "  Sickness  is  felony,"  and  the 
former's,  "  Every  man  is  a  rascal  as  soon  as  he  is 
sick." 

His  stern  self-scrutiny  convicted  him  of   seK- 


74  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

consciousness  in  the  pulpit  and  of  ambition  for  dis- 
tinction in  his  private  heart.  He  finds  himself 
wishing  to  preach  stHking  rather  than  melting 
sermons,  a  contrast  which  discloses  the  quality  of 
his  earlier  ideal  and  its  inferiority  to  that  of  char- 
acter-building and  social  reformation  to  which  he 
finally  attained.  In  the  first  years  of  his  ministry 
it  was  difficult  for  those  on  either  side  of  the 
widening  breach  to  say  with  much  complacency, 
"  He  has  become  as  one  of  us."  The  more  and 
less  orthodox  made  him  equally  welcome  to  their 
pulpits  in  the  course  of  that  round  of  exchanges 
which  was  then  strictly  habitual.  Possibly  and 
probably  the  more  orthodox  were  friendlier  with 
him  than  the  less.  It  has  been  much  insisted 
that  Channing's  rehgious  thought  was  all  of  one 
piece  from  his  first  preaching  till  the  last.  But  if 
his  early  preaching  was  not  formally  Calvinistic 
it  was  frankly  evangelical.  Judged  by  the  present 
standards  of  orthodoxy  it  was  hyper-orthodox,  and 
this  for  six  or  eight  years  or  more  after  his  settle- 
ment. 

The  truth  of  this  position  was  first  made  clear 
to  me  by  my  quaint  and  picturesque  old  friend. 
Captain  John  Codman,  whose  father  was  ordained 
in  Dorchester  in  1808.  The  father  was  avowedly 
a  Calvinist  of  the  stricter  sort,  yet  not  only  did 
Channing  have  no  hesitation  in  preaching  his  ordi- 
nation sermon,  but  he  embodied  in  that  sermon  the 
traditional  scheme  of  salvation  without  stint,  in 
his   description  of    an  everlasting  hell,  trying,  it 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  75 

seemed,  to  be  as  impressive  as  Jonathan  Edwards. 
Captain  Codman's  recollection  of  this  sermon  from 
some  early  reading  was  accurate  and  comprehen- 
sive, but  I  have  confirmed  his  memory  by  other  in- 
formation.i  We  find  Dr.  Channing  warning  the 
same  Rev.  John  Codman  against  the  liberal  opin- 
ions of  the  time.  The  burden  of  his  early  preach- 
ing was,  in  no  slight  degree,  "  the  guilt  of  sin,  the 
depravity  of  human  nature,  the  danger  of  impeni- 
tent sinners,  the  glories  of  the  divine  character,  and 
the  riches  of  redeeming  grace."  "  So  solemnly  and 
tenderly  did  he  preach  on  these  and  kindred  sub- 
jects, and  so  forcibly  and  pungently  did  he  apply 
them  to  his  hearers  that  some  of  his  people,  it 
was  said,  began  to  be  alarmed  lest  he  would  come 
out,  as  they  expressed  their  fears,  '  a  rigid  Hop- 
kinsian.' " 

There  was  no  schism  in  these  particulars  be- 
tween his  pulpit  utterance  and  his  self-communion 
as  this  found  expression  in  the  journal  he  so  dili- 
gently kept,  and  which,  even  as  partially  printed, 
lays  bare  to  us  the  recesses  of  his  inmost  soul. 
"  It  becomes  men,"  we  read,  "  to  weep,  to  feel  true, 
hearty  sorrow  at  sin  itself,  to  abhor  and  condemn 
themselves  as  without  excuse,  to  feel  themselves 
dependent   on  the   free,  unmerited,   unobligated, 

1  See  "  Dr.  Channing's  Progress,"  in  Christian  Register,  March 
8, 1883,  and  Gillett's  "  Unitarian  Controversy,"  Historical  Maga- 
zine, April,  1871,  pp.  251,  252.  Best  of  all,  I  have  the  entire  ser- 
mon, as  originally  published,  in  a  volume  of  sermons  of  the  time, 
preserved  by  Dr.  George  R.  Noyes  and  given  to  me  by  his  son, 
Rev.  Charles  Noyes,  of  Andover,  Mass. 


76  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

sovereign  grace  for  pardon  and  renewaL"  Simi- 
larly, "  Every  man  must  be  new-born,  have  a  new 
heart,  a  new  principle,  end,  motive,  disposition,  a 
change  by  the  spirit  into  a  meek,  submissive,  self- 
renouncing,  self -abhorred,  benevolent  state  of  soul, 
before  he  can  beheve,  approve,  choose  the  gospel, 
and  receive  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  Everywhere 
in  his  journal  of  this  period  his  temper,  whatever 
his  theology,  is  that  of  the  Puritan  ascetic,  the 
Calvinistic  saint.  It  was  more  genial,  further  on, 
when  Fenelon  drew  him  as  to  a  brother's  heart. 
Then,  looking  back,  he  saw  that  he  had  made  a 
tyrant  of  his  conscience  and  had  served  it  as  a 
slave.  Only  relatively  to  this  condition  did  he 
ever  attain  to  joyous  freedom.  His  beatitude, 
Dr.  Furness  said,  was  that  of  those  who  mourn. 

When  Channing  had  arrived  at  perfect  seK- 
possession,  it  was  vain  to  look  for  his  complete st 
self-expression  in  his  theological  sermons  and  dis- 
cussions. It  was  yet  vainer  to  do  this  in  the  first 
years  of  his  ministry,  before  his  theology  had  been 
moralized,  when  that  and  his  best  aspirations  stood 
over  against  each  other  in  mutual  isolation  and 
hostility.  In  the  "  Memoir  "  and  other  sources 
we  find  expressions  corresponding  to  those  years 
that  have  abiding  excellence  and  charm.  These 
were  not  so  much  anticipations  of  the  nobler  sen- 
timents of  his  maturest  growth  as  they  were  ex- 
ponents of  his  moral  continuity,  the  insurgence  of 
that  faith  in  human  nature  which  had  come  to 
him    under  the  Cambridge   willows,  which   grew 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  77 

with  his  growth  and  strengthened  with  his  strength, 
and  was  fortified  by  those  loved  writers  whom  he 
had  taken  for  his  guides,  Hutcheson,  Ferguson, 
and  Price,  sometimes  obscured  by  the  Hopkinsian 
cloud,  but  never  wholly  lost.  And  he  was  never 
an  active  propagandist  of  his  darker  views.  Ser- 
mons like  that  of  the  Codman  ordination  were  in- 
frequent ebullitions.  In  general  he  avoided  con- 
troversy and  those  who  loved  to  stir  up  its  inglorious 
dust.  He  was  content  to  leave  the  outlines  of  his 
Theology,  Christology,  and  Soteriology  indistinct, 
so  long  as  they  circumscribed  for  him  an  ethical 
and  spiritual  reality ;  and  he  insisted  that  vital 
Christianity  was  not  dependent  on  a  strictness  of 
construction  which  the  New  Testament  did  not 
disclose. 

If  the  Fatherhood  of  God  had  not  assumed  that 
dominance  with  him  it  afterward  enjoyed,  it  had 
already  a  peculiar  prominence  for  him :  — 

No  character  could  bring  God  so  nigh  as  this  of  the 
Father.  ...  I  fear  it  has  been  the  influence  of  many 
speculations  of  ingenious  men  on  the  Divine  character  to 
divest  God  of  that  paternal  tenderness  which  is  of  all 
views  most  suited  to  touch  the  heart.  ...  Is  it  not  the 
character  of  a  perfect  man  that  the  happiness  of  others 
is  his  own,  that  he  knows  no  higher  joy  than  to  confer 
and  to  witness  felicity,  that  his  heart  responds  to  the 
feelings  of  those  around  him  ?  And  if  this  is  perfect  in 
man,  can  it  be  an  imperfection  in  God  ?     (1811.) 

This  argument  ad  hominem  was  anthropomor- 
phic certainly,  but  that  it  was  a  favorite  one  with 


78  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Jesus  —  "If  ye  then,  being  evil,"  etc.  —  was  for 
Channing  a  sufficient  recommendation.  How  gen- 
tle tlie  reprehension  of  the  New  England  Calvin- 
ism in  the  above  passage  !  In  the  same  spirit  is 
his  deflection  from  the  traditional  hue  of  vicarious 
atonement :  — 

Mercy  is  an  essential  attribute  of  God,  not  an  affec- 
tion produced  in  him  by  a  foreign  cause.  His  blessings 
are  free,  bestowed  from  a  real  love  of  his  creatures,  — 
not  purchased  from  him  and  bestowed  by  another  on 
those  whose  welfare  he  disregards.  [Nevertheless]  his 
very  character  as  the  universal  Father  obliges  him  to 
punish  and  humble  the  disobedient,  selfish,  unjust,  proud, 
and  impure,  to  redress  every  principle  and  practice  op- 
posed to  the  order  and  happiness  and  perfection  of  his 
creatures.     (1811.) 

In  this  last  and  similar  passages  I  have  fancied 
that  he  might  be  girding  at  the  Universalism  which 
was  at  this  time  making  a  lively  stir  in  the  commu- 
nity, and  of  which,  especially  of  Ballou's  improve- 
ment upon  Murray,  Channing  had  no  adequate 
knowledge  and  appreciation.  And  when  he  bids 
men  not  confound  the  love  of  God  with  "  the 
ravings  of  enthusiasm,"  he  had  probably  the  Meth- 
odists in  mind,  and  was  speaking  from  that  side  of 
his  culture  which  had  been  nourished  by  Charles 
Chauncy  and  other  critics  of  the  Great  Awakening. 
Channing  often  used  the  word  "  enthusiasm "  in 
connections  that  are  convincing  that  the  word  had 
not  acquired  for  him  its  modern  sense,  but  was 
equivalent,  as  commonly  in  the  eighteenth  century, 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  79 

Jx)  fanaticism.^  As  early  as  1805  we  have  one  of 
those  expressions  which  had  a  perennial  freshness 
in  his  thought :  — 

Religion  is  the  rectification  of  the  soul ;  it  is  inward 
health  ;  it  is  the  direction  of  the  affections  to  the  most 
interesting  objects.  It  consists  of  feelings  and  dispo- 
sitions which  include  everything  generous,  disinterested, 
sympathetic,  and  pure.  .  .  .  When  one  is  growing  in 
religion  he  converts  more  and  more  the  common  pursuits 
of  life  into  means  of  piety  and  goodness,  and  makes 
them  the  way  to  heaven. 

If  Channing  had  been  one  of  the  quoters,  as 
he  was  not,  and  he  had  had  Keble's  "  Christian 
Year  "  at  hand,  which  was  not  published  till  1827, 
he  would  certainly  have  quoted  here  :  — 

The  trivial  round,  the  common  task, 
Will  furnish  all  we  oug-ht  to  ask  : 
Room  to  deny  ourselves,  a  road 
To  bring  us  daily  nearer  God. 

Already  in  much  that  touches  spiritual  growth 
we  have  a  nice  fore-feeling  of  Bushnell's  "  Christian 
Nurture."  Conversion  is  regarded  as  a  process, 
and  the  influences  of  a  Christian  home  as  being  a 
better  introduction  to  the  Christian  life  than  any 
catastrophic  spiritual  experience.  Already,  too, 
there  is  such  praise  of  intellectual  honesty  as  rings 
in  the  braver  man  that  was  to  be :  — 

It  is  a  quality  of  character  without  which  the  most 
splendid  talents  are  of  little  avail.  .  .  .  Perhaps  it  in- 

^  Professor  Woodberry,  with  perfect  justice,  finds  enthusiasm 
one  of  the  three  distinguishing'  notes  of  Channing-' s  complete 
and  final  character ;  the  others,  rectitude  and  sensibility. 


80  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

eludes  more  magnanimity,  courage,  and  self-denial  than 
any  other  virtue.  Multitudes  have  dared  to  face  death 
on  the  field  of  battle,  who  have  yet  wanted  strength 
and  spirit  to  oppose  their  own  and  others'  prejudices. 
(1811.) 

He  pleads  for  a  careful  cultivation  of  "  the  art 
of  meditation  "  which,  to  his  maturer  apprehension, 
was  something  as  different  from  that  revery  which 
had  despoiled  his  youth  as  the  ship's  course,  obe- 
dient to  her  helm,  is  from  the  aimless  drifting  of 
the  derelict  upon  the  trackless  sea.  Of  this  art  he 
was  already  master,  for  close  and  steady  application 
of  his  mind  to  the  great  problems,  as  by  him  con- 
ceived, not  shamed  by  Amiel  or  Joubert,  much  less 
by  Senancour,  whose  sentimental  meditation  always 
verged  upon  that  revery  which  is  the  abandonment 
of  self-control. 

When  he  speaks  of  Jesus,  the  emphasis  is  on 
his  moral  grandeur  rather  than  upon  his  special 
nature  or  peculiar  gifts.  That  human  nature  was 
glorified  in  him  is  a  recurrent  note  which  seems  to 
require  his  pure  humanity  for  its  logical  accuracy, 
but  Channing  was  not  always  the  logician,  and  it 
is  certain  that  his  conception  of  Jesus  at  this  time 
was  not  Socinian,  or  more  purely  humanitarian,  but 
Arian.  "  It  is  an  argument  in  favor  of  Jesus 
Christ,"  he  says,  "  that  he  appeared  in  a  character 
altogether  new."  In  due  time  we  shall  find  him 
leaving  this  position  leagues  behind. ^     There  is 

1  See  W.  C.  Gannett's  Ezra  Stiles  Gannett,  p.  218,  where  we 
have  Dr.  Gannett's  comment  on  Dr.  Channing's  sermon  of  Jan- 
uary 5,  1840. 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  81 

much  insistence  on  "  the  simplicity  of  Christ." 
Christianity  "  is  a  plain,  perspicuous  religion,  and 
suited  to  the  comprehension  and  the  wants  of 
all  classes  of  society.  A  universal  religion  ought 
to  have  the  clearness  and  brightness  of  the  sun." 
This  is  a  very  characteristic  note,  which  had  for 
its  objective  the  orthodox  delight  in  the  mystery 
of  the  trinity,  atonement,  and  "  the  decrees." 
The  true  Church  is  the  body  of  ''  Christ's  friends 
and  followers  who  truly  imbibe  his  spirit,  no 
matter  by  what  name  they  are  called,  in  what 
house  they  worship,  by  what  peculiarities  of  mode 
and  opinion  they  are  distinguished,  under  what 
sky  they  live,  or  what  language  they  speak." 
With  this  forecast  of  that  unsectarian  spirit  which 
was  to  animate  his  full-grown  powers  with  a  pe- 
culiar ardor  and  delight  we  have  abundant  promise 
of  that  conception  of  religion  as  the  reformation 
of  society  which  was  in  its  completeness,  perhaps, 
his  most  significant  anticipation  of  our  present 
aspirations  and  ideals.  What  he  wrote  of  party 
spirit  should  be  "  appointed  to  be  read  in  churches  " 
at  the  beginning  of  every  political  campaign.  He 
denounced  it  as  "  the  worst  enemy  of  free  govern- 
ments, the  one  from  which  we  have  most  to  fear." 

You  may  look  to  any  man  for  fairness  of  mind  and 
sensibility  to  truth  rather  than  to  a  confirmed  partisan. 
He  gives  up  his  reason,  his  dignity  as  a  rational  being 
to  his  party.  Party  spirit  has  as  fatal  effects  on  the 
heart  as  on  the  understanding.  The  man  who  sur- 
renders himself  to  the  interests  of  his  party  becomes  a 


82  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

malignant  man.  Irritation  becomes  the  habit  of  his 
mind.  .  .  .  Look  anywhere  for  candor,  generosity,  and 
tenderness  rather  than  to  the  breast  of  a  partisan. 
(1812.) 

When  war  was  declared  against  Great  Britain 
in  1812,  Massachusetts  appointed  a  day  of  public 
fast,  and  Channing  improved  the  occasion  with  a 
sermon  which  was  the  flattest  treason,  if  it  be  trea- 
son, as  we  have  recently  been  taught,  to  oppose 
any  war  in  which  our  country  happens  to  be  en- 
gaged. Channing,  then  and  always,  conceived  that 
it  was  the  highest  and  most  patriotic  duty  to 
denounce  an  unjust  war,  by  whomsoever  waged. 
Nevertheless,  his  judgment  of  the  war  of  1812  may 
have  taken  its  color  unduly  from  the  Massachusetts 
Federalism  of  the  time,  which  fell  far  below  Chan- 
ning's  standard  of  disinterested  benevolence. 

Above  the  general  range  of  Channing's  thought 
and  speech  during  the  first  decade  of  his  ministry 
soared  the  high  peak  of  his  passionate  engagement 
with  the  idea  of  perfection  as  man's  proper  goal. 

Do  you  ask  in  what  this  perfection  consists  ? 

I  answer  in  knowledge,  in  love,  and  in  activity.  The 
mind  devoted  to  these  ends  is  as  happy  as  it  is  perfect. 
Its  happiness  partakes  of  the  purity  and  serenity  of  the 
divine  felicity.  Now  this  I  conceive  is  the  end  of  God, 
to  bring  his  rational  offspring  to  this  perfect  and  blessed 
state,  to  give  them  the  widest,  clearest,  and  brightest 
views,  to  give  them  the  strongest,  purest,  most  disin- 
terested love,  and  to  form  them  to  the  most  vigorous  and 
efficient  exertion  of  all  their  powers  in  the  promotion  of 
the  best  designs.     (1810.) 


THE  PARISH  MINISTER  83 

I  cannot  end  my  account  of  Channing's  early 
ministry  upon  a  better  note  than  this,  or  one  more 
characteristic  of  the  man.  That  word  "  activity  " 
recurs  with  significant  frequency.  The  conception 
to  which  it  is  related  unifies  Channing's  life  and 
work  as  perfectly  as  any,  while  at  the  same  time  it 
anticipates  that  energistic  view  of  ethics  which 
avoids  the  defects  of  the  utilitarian  view,  and  does 
not  leave  ethics  where  the  intuitionalist  leaves  it 
—  hanging  in  mid-air.  This  view  is  at  once  as 
new  as  Friedrich  Paulsen's  "  System  of  Ethics," 
whose  main  doctrine  is  that  the  will  does  not  aim 
at  pleasure^  but  at  definite  concrete  activity^  and  as 
old  as  Aristotle,  who  wrote  (what  Channing  might 
have  written),  "  The  highest  good  of  man  consists 
in  the  exercise  of  the  energies  and  excellences  of 
the  soul,  especially  the  most  perfect."  Apart  from 
Channing's  too  simple  and  mechanical  theology, 
nothing  is  more  obvious  than  his  large  anticipation 
of  our  best  recent  thought ;  if  I  should  not  say  his 
large  expression  of  that  better  thought  which  is  at 
once  the  oldest  and  the  latest  born,  the  common 
wisdom  of  all  those  who  have  meditated  most  pro- 
foundly on  the  origin,  the  destiny,  and  the  business 
of  the  human  soul. 


CHAPTER  rV 

EVOLUTION   AND    REACTION 

The  Federal  Street  Society  had  its  parsonage 
on  Berry  Street,  in  the  rear  of  the  meeting-house, 
and  to  this,  in  the  fall  of  1803,  Channing  invited 
his  mother,  with  his  younger  brothers  and  sisters, 
so  urgently  and  so  adroitly  that  the  Newport 
house  and  garden  were  given  up  and  a  family  mi- 
gration to  Boston  was  assured.  How  could  they 
refuse  him  when  his  rooms  were  so  empty,  his 
wood-pile  heaped  in  vain,  his  heart  an  aching  void  ? 
He  and  Francis  had  agreed  that  one  or  the  other 
of  them  should  remain  a  bachelor  until  the  other 
children  were  grown  up  and  the  mother  without 
anxiety  as  to  their  education  and  support,  and  Wil- 
liam now  assumed  the  burden  of  this  contract  and 
left  his  brother  free.  With  something  of  the  wis. 
dom  of  the  serpent,  or,  if  one  prefers,  the  shrewd- 
ness of  the  saints,  he  invested  his  kindness  with 
an  air  of  gratefulness  for  the  benefits  which  he 
expected  to  derive  from  this  arrangement.  His 
petty  salary  (-$1200),  at  which  the  young  can- 
didate of  to-day  would  look  askance,  however 
moderate  his  gifts,  then  seemed  to  Channing  "  the 
potentiality  of  growing  rich  beyond  the  dreams  of 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  85 

avarice,"  and  he  addressed  himself   carefully  to 
prevent  the  accumulation  of  an  imnecessary  hoard. 
His   board    was    definitely   fixed    and    regularly 
paid,  and  what  remained  was,  for  the  most  part, 
intrusted   to  his  mother    for  ''her  safe-keeping," 
which  meant  her  use  in  so  far  as  she  could  be  per- 
suaded to  that  end.    His  sisters,  too,  were  made  to 
feel  that  they  were  only  doing  their  duty  when 
they  relieved  him  of  his  wedding  fees,  those  bur- 
densome   additions    to   his   stated   recompense  of 
reward.     A  relative  tells  how  grieved  he  was  that 
he  had  only  fifty  dollars  with  which  to  buy  her  a 
wedding  present,  but  here  we  seem  to  have  quite 
as  much  a  naive  expression  of  her  generous  expec- 
tancy as  a  proof  of  his  distressing  lack  of  funds. 
If  he  had  already  ceased  to  pride  himself  on  his 
bad  health,  he  still  had  his  silly  side  in  the  manage- 
ment of  his  physical  fife.     He  was  as  much  afraid 
as  ever  of  self-indulgence,  and  hence  took  for  his 
study  the   smallest   room    in  the  house,   while  a 
much  better  one  was  crying  to  be  used,  and  for  his 
sleeping-room  the   attic,  which  was  ill  furnished, 
cheerless,  cold,  and  every  way  ill  suited  to  the  con- 
dition of  his  health.    Sometimes,  when  this  pressed 
him  hard,  he  was   driven   into  more   comfortable 
quarters ;  but  on  the  first  sign  of  improvement,  he 
beat  a  masterly  retreat  upon  his  favorite  position. 
Only  the  perfect  neatness  of  his  dress  redeemed 
its  lack  of  style  and  quality.     Happily  there  was 
an  exuberance  of  spirits  in  other  members  of  the 
family  that  prevented  them  from  being  sicklied  o'er 


86  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

with  the  pale  cast  of  William's  gravity,  if  it  did 
not  do  anything  to  enliven  his  habitual  mood,  so 
painfully  aloof,  so  introspective  and  absorbed.  His 
mother's  lively  sallies  contrasted  sharply  with  his 
inviolable  calm.  It  is  conceivable  that  one  of  these 
produced  that  momentary  ruffling  of  the  waters 
when  he  cried,  "  Pray  stop,  for  if  you  go  on,  I  shall 
feel  bound  to  repeat  every  word  to  the  person  of 
whom  you  are  speaking."  After  that,  there  must 
have  been  silence  in  the  domestic  heaven  for  the 
space  of  half  an  hour. 

The  early  years  of  Channing's  ministry  were 
stirring  times  in  the  political  field.  They  coin- 
cided with  the  triumph  of  Democracy,  than  which 
Theodore  Dwight,  brother  of  Timothy,  could  con- 
ceive "  nothing  more  dreadful  this  side  of  heU ; " 
the  Embargo,  which  infuriated  the  commercial 
mind  of  Massachusetts  ;  the  war  of  1812,  with 
which  it  had  no  sympathy ;  while  still  the  ship  of 
state  forged  bravely  on  her  destined  track,  much 
buffeted,  but  little  swerved.  Channing's  Federal- 
ism was  ingrained  too  deep  to  be  easily  eradicated, 
and  his  social  setting  tended  to  increase  its  violence, 
but  the  grave  justness  of  his  mind  preserved  him 
from  the  extravagance  of  thought  and  speech  that 
was  the  general  note.  In  his  war  sermon  of  1816 
and  in  his  "  Examiner  "  article,  "  The  Union,"  of 
1829,  we  have  liis  calmer  retrospection  on  the 
events  which  in  their  course  might  well  have  hur- 
ried him  into  irrational  speech.  For  judgment  on 
his  temper  in  the  thickest  of  the  trouble  we  have 


EVOLUTION  AND   REACTION  87 

his  sermon  of  1812,  preached  on  the  Fast  Day 
which  was  Massachusetts'  comment  on  the  declara- 
tion of  war.  Much  of  it  was  devoted  to  an  attempt 
to  allay  the  harsher  passions  of  the  time.  But  he 
did  not  anticipate  that  conception  of  lese  majeste 
which  has  recently  found  favor  in  men's  eyes.  He 
said :  — 

Rulers  are  not  to  be  viewed  with  a  malignant  jeal- 
ousy ;  but  they  ought  to  be  inspected  with  a  watchful, 
undazzled  eye.  Their  virtues  and  services  are  to  be  re- 
warded with  generous  praise,  and  their  crimes  and  arts 
and  usurpations  should  be  exposed  with  a  fearless  sin- 
cerity. .  .  .  Freedom  of  opinion,  of  speech,  and  of  the 
press,  is  our  most  valuable  privilege,  the  very  soul  of 
republican  institutions,  the  safeguard  of  all  other  rights. 

We  seem  to  be  reading  much  more  modern 
history  when  we  come  to  his  reply  to  those  who 
would  have  had  criticism  silent  in  the  midst  of 
arms :  — 

The  cry  has  been  that  war  is  declared,  and  all  opposi- 
tion should  therefore  be  hushed.  A  sentiment  more  un- 
worthy of  a  free  country  can  hardly  be  propagated.  .  .  . 
Admit  this  doctrine,  let  rulers  once  know  that,  by  placing 
the  country  in  a  state  of  war,  they  place  themselves 
beyond  the  only  power  they  dread,  the  power  of  free 
discussion,  and  we  may  expect  war  without  end.  Our 
peace  and  all  our  interests  require  that  a  different  senti- 
ment should  prevail. 

Many  things  were  happening  in  theological  as 
well  as  in  political  circles,  during  the  first  dozen 
years  of  Channing's  ministry.      Doubtless  these 


88  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

had  their  effect  upon  Channing,  though  his  dispo- 
sition was  to  keep  himself  as  far  as  possible  from 
the  madding  crowd  of  controversial  theologians. 
His  own  theology  was  steadily  becoming  less  Cal- 
vinistic  under  the  influence  of  improving  health 
and  an  environment  of  domestic  cheerfulness,  to- 
gether with  the  subjection  of  the  special  doctrines 
of  Calvinism  to  the  purifying  flame  of  his  great 
central  conception  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God.  Two 
things  that  touched  him  very  closely  marked  the 
years  1811,  1812  :  the  first,  hopefully  and  cheer- 
fully, Thacher's  installation ;  the  second.  Buck- 
minster's  death,  with  profound  melancholy  and 
regret.  Thacher  had  read  theology  under  Chan- 
ning's  supervision;  Channing  gave  him  the  right 
hand  of  fellowship  at  his  ordination,  and  their 
mutual  affection  was  complete.  "  Heaven  can 
hardly  bestow  on  me,"  said  Channing,  "  a  greater 
blessing  than  the  friendship  of  Thacher."  During 
the  brief  term  of  Thacher's  ministry  (six  years), 
the  promise  of  his  ability  and  influence  was  hardly 
less  than  Channing's  during  the  same  period,  and 
it  was  much  greater,  apparently,  than  Channing's 
in  the  six  years  between  his  and  Thacher's  or- 
dination.^    But   the  younger  Buckminster  was   a 

1  W.  C.  Gannett  calls  Thacher  "  the  Harry  Percy  "  of  the 
young  liberals,  and  that  there  was  in  him  some  joy  of  battle  is 
shown  by  his  attack  on  Andover  and  its  ambigoious  creed  (1809). 
His  literary,  theological,  and  controversial  activity  covered  thir- 
teen years,  six  of  these  in  advance  of  his  ordination,  while  he  was 
conducting  the  Monthly  Anthology,  teaching  in  the  Boston  Latin 
School,  and  holding  the  post  of  librarian  in  Harvard  College. 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  89 

luminary  who  outshone  them  both  while  they  all 
hung  together  in  the  Boston  sky.  Settled  two 
years  in  advance  of  Buckminster,  Channing  was 
of  slower  growth  in  liberal  ideas,  if  I  should  not 
rather  say  that  his  early  growth  was,  for  a  time, 
arrested  by  the  personal  influence  of  Hopkins,  and 
a  state  of  health  which  gave  his  thought  a  Calvin- 
istic  flow.  Buckminster  was  a  far  more  brilliant 
preacher,  a  much  abler  scholar,  singularly  beautiful 
in  face  and  form,  with  such  a  voice  as  Boston  had 
not  known,  —  his  literary  taste  and  judgment  and 
manner  of  writing  the  delight  of  the  Anthology 
Club  and  the  chief  ornament  of  the  "  Monthly 
Anthology  "  (1804-11)  ;  his  social  graces  excelled 
only  by  a  piety  as  of  one  who  had  acquaintance 
with  invisible  things.  As  I  compare  his  with 
Channing's  early  sermons,  I  find  less  difference  of 
thought  than  of  style,  and  Buckminster's  style  less 
ornate  as  compared  with  Channing's  than  the  tra- 
dition, formed,  perhaps,  on  his  Phi  Beta  Oration, 
had  led  me  to  conceive.  It  is  more  remarkable 
for  its  purity  than  for  its  richness.  It  has  more 
vigor  than  Channing's  and  less  stream.  It  is  not 
a  whit  more  literary  in  the  sense  of  being  marked 
by  literary  allusion  and  quotation.  Emerson  had 
not  yet  come  to  educate  the  young  men  with  his 
quoting  manner,  as  he  had  been  educated  by  Plu- 
tarch and  Montaigne.  In  a  volume  of  Buckmin- 
ster's sermons,  I  find  only  two  verse  quotations,  each 
of  two  lines,  and  not  one  prose  quotation,  except 
from    the    Bible.      Buckminster's   more    striking 


90  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

effect  must  have  been  owing  to  his  graces  of  per- 
son, voice,  and  manner,  and  his  more  cheerful  tone. 
"After  his  death,"  says  Mr.  Henry  Adams,  "  Uni- 
tarians learned  to  regard  WiUiam  EUery  Channing 
as  their  most  promising  leader."  There  is  a  hint 
of  disparagement  in  that  expression,  and  it  is  sig- 
nificant of  a  tendency  of  which  I  seem  to  have 
encountered  a  good  deal  from  first  to  last.  Buck- 
minster  was,  in  fact,  preeminently  the  founder  of 
literary  Boston,  and  the  first  of  that  coterie  of  Bos- 
ton ministers  whom  O.  B.  Frothingham  has  de- 
scribed so  happily  in  his  "  Boston  Unitarianism," 
—  Frothingham' s  father  one  of  the  most  typical. 
Buckminster  celebrated  that  marriage  of  Unitari- 
anism with  Literature,  the  offspring  of  which  have 
been  so  numerous  and  so  honorable  to  the  parental 
stock.  Edward  Everett  succeeded  him  at  Brattle 
Street  with  promise  of  an  equal  pulpit  fame,  but 
was  quickly  drawn  away  from  the  ministry  to  a  life 
of  literature  and  politics.  It  does  not  seem  un- 
likely that  Buckminster  would  have  anticipated  his 
course  if  he  had  lived  a  little  longer.  He  had  been 
appointed  shortly  before  his  death  to  the  Dexter 
professorship  of  Biblical  Criticism  in  Harvard  Col- 
lege, a  position  for  which  he  was  eminently  fitted 
by  his  Greek  and  Hebrew  studies.  Had  a  full 
measure  of  years  been  granted  him,  and  had  he 
given  to  his  preaching  all  his  strength,  I  cannot  but 
believe  that  Channing  would  have  much  the  same 
historical  preeminence  that  he  has  now.  Buck- 
minster's  would   have   been   the   greater  literary 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  91 

name  ;  Channlng's  the  greater  in  religion.  His  was 
the  deeper  note,  an  ethical  passion  to  which  Buck- 
minster  did  not  attain.  But  there  was  to  be  no 
generous  rivalry  of  their  maturer  powers.  Buck- 
minster's  brief  ministry  was  overclouded  by  that 
dreadful  malady  (epilepsy)  which,  in  June,  1812, 
suddenly  put  out  the  light  of  reason,  and  in  a  few 
days  the  light  of  life.  His  father,  as  fine  a  spirit, 
clinging  to  the  faith  from  which  his  son  had  grown 
away,  died  twenty-four  hours  later  in  Vermont.  A 
fearful  thunderstorm  swept  over  the  village  where 
he  lay  awaiting  death,  and  a  few  hours  later  over 
Boston,  but  it  bore  no  message  on  its  wings.  The 
message  went  the  other  way.  On  the  morning  of 
the  10th,  the  elder  Buckminster  said  to  his  wife, 
"  My  son  is  dead."  There  was  no  knowledge  of  his 
sickness  to  suggest  the  faithful  intuition.  Chan- 
ning,  with  the  help  of  Mr.  Thacher,  selected  a  vol- 
ume of  the  son's  sermons  for  publication,  and  did 
his  best  to  justify  the  preacher's  fame.  The  choice 
must  have  been  difficult,  for  there  was  a  remark- 
able evenness  in  the  flow  of  Buckminster's  sermonic 
thought. 

And  now,  as  we  approach  the  time  (1815)  when 
the  deep  calm  of  Channing's  life  was  to  be  swept 
by  a  strong  wind  of  controversy,  and  the  quiet 
of  his  meditation  was  to  be  invaded  by  interests 
and  passions  foreign  to  his  natural  inclination,  it 
becomes  necessary  to  go  back  for  a  considerable 
stretch  along  the  way  New  England  thought  had 
come  and  note  the  antecedents  that  prepared  for 


92  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

the  Unitarian  controversy  on  the  local  scene.  Back 
of  every  beginning  in  thought  or  action  there  is 
another  of  less  obvious  character,  and  for  the  be- 
ginnings of  that  Unitarianism,  or  liberal  Chris- 
tianity, of  which  Channing  was  the  leading  spirit, 
we  must  go  back  quite  to  the  beginning  of  the 
New  England  settlement.  We  must,  indeed,  go 
back  much  further,  —  to  the  sources  from  which 
early  English  Arians  and  Socinians,  as  well  as 
those  of  New  England,  drew  their  widening  stream. 
So  far  as  these  were  Spanish  and  Italian  they  have 
been  exhibited  by  Professor  Bonet-Maury  in  his 
"Early  Sources  of  English  Unitarian  Christianity," 
with  immense  learning  and  ardor  of  conviction,  and 
the  statues  of  Valdes  and  Ochino  are  appropriately 
crowned.  Beyond  these  the  thread  that  stretched 
back  to  Arius  and  the  New  Testament,  however 
tenuous,  was  never  wholly  lost.  The  blood  of  the 
Waldenses  and  the  Albigenses  reddened  it.  The 
same  thread  stretching  forward  was  tried  as  by  fire 
when  certain  Baptists  out  of  Holland  were  burned 
by  Henry  VIII.  in  1535  for  denying  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity.  The  theory  of  several  concurrent 
beginnings  of  the  English  Unitarian  development  is 
more  reasonable  than  any  bent  too  eagerly  on  sim- 
plifying the  account  of  this.  The  Protestant  revo- 
lution was  a  spring  wind,  dancing  like  a  psaltress 
on  the  hard  sods  of  the  traditional  belief,  and 
many  a  heresy  sprang  flower-like  where  it  passed. 
If  we  go  for  Unitarian  beginnings  preeminently  to 
Servetus   and  the  Socini,  Laelius  and  Faustus,  a 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  93 

more  careful  search  will  discover  them  under  the 
shadow  of  more  unsuspected  names.  Calvin  was 
too  good  a  critic  not  to  recognize  the  absence  from 
the  New  Testament  of  any  specific  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  and  his  friend  Farel,  who  superintended  the 
burning  of  Servetus,  omitted  the  Trinity  from  his 
"  Summary  "  of  things  necessary  to  salvation,  while 
Luther,  omitting  the  word  Trinity  from  his  liturgy, 
wrote,  "  This  name  Trinity  is  never  found  in  the 
Scriptures, but  men  have  devised  and  invented  it" 
as  "  a  heavenly  matter  which  the  world  cannot  un- 
derstand," and,  setting  themselves  to  explain  which, 
"  the  schools  have  become  fools."  But  Erasmus, 
of  quite  different  temper,  was  a  more  fertile  source 
of  anti-trinitarian  thought,  though  he  was  not  him- 
self frankly  committed  to  that  thought.  His  re- 
vised New  Testament  Text  and  Annotations  were 
an  armory  from  which  "  the  Dutch  and  English 
Anabaptists,  who  disowned  for  the  most  part  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  "  (sic  Martineau),  drew  out 
the  weapons  of  their  Unitarian  and  Arminian  war- 
fare against  the  received  theology. 

To  go  further  into  this  matter  is  to  be  convinced 
with  Martineau  that  the  English  Bible  exerted  a 
more  powerful  influence  than  any  individual  or 
sect  in  spreading  Unitarian  belief.  The  dullest 
could  but  note  the  enormous  gulf  that  widened  be- 
tween the  vociferous  Trinitarianism  of  the  mass, 
the  rosary,  the  creeds,  the  liturgies,  and  the  silence 
of  the  New  Testament.  The  more  exaggerated  the 
Trinitarianism  of  the  ecclesiastical  forms,  the  more 


94  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

conspicuous  and  impressive  was  the  difference  of 
the  New  Testament  therefrom.  Shutting  the 
Prayer  Book  with  its  "  Holy,  Blessed,  and  Glorious 
Trinity,  three  Persons  in  One  God,"  they  opened 
the  New  Testament  at  the  surprising  words,  "  To 
us  there  is  One  God,  the  Father."  As  here  so 
everywhere.  No  such  fount  of  heresy  was  ever 
oj^ened  in  a  barren  land  as  that  which  flowed  in 
Wiclif's  translation  of  the  Bible,  and  later  in 
Tyndale's  and  Coverdale's  and  the  next  of  kin. 
It  is  absurd  to  view  the  English  and  American 
development  of  Unitarianism  before  Channing's 
time  as  distinct  and  separate  forms  of  a  theological 
evolution,  one  merely  influencing  the  other,  and 
that  one  the  English  exclusively.  English  theo- 
logy was  American  theology  in  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  American  theology  was  Eng- 
glish.  Sometimes  the  American  end  of  the  strenuous 
team  was  in  the  lead  and  sometimes  the  other.  If 
America  furnished  no  such  names  to  the  liberal 
tendency  as  Milton's  and  Locke's  and  Newton's 
and  Samuel  Clarke's,  England  furnished  no  such 
protagonist  of  orthodoxy  as  Jonathan  Edwards. 
There  was  constant  interchange  of  thought  and 
books  between  the  mother  country  and  the  colony. 
Tracking  the  course  of  the  English  development 
by  the  light  of  burning  heretics,  that  guidance 
fails  us  after  1612,  when  Bartholomew  Legate  and 
Edward  Wightman,  both  Unitarians  of  the  Arian 
type,  went  to  the  stake,  and  were  the  last  to 
suffer  in  that  way.     About  the  same  time  Emlyn 


EVOLUTION  AND   REACTION  95 

was  subjected  to  a  heavy  fine  and  long  imprison- 
ment for  privately  holding  similar  views.  In  1697, 
Aikenhead,  an  Edinburgh  University  student, 
eighteen  years  old,  was  put  to  death  for  saying 
that  "  god-man  "  was  as  absurd  as  "  goat-stag  "  or 
"  square-round."  If  the  boy  was  not  a  representa- 
tive Unitarian,  the  killing  was  very  strictly  repre- 
sentative of  the  place  and  time.  It  was  a  company 
of  persecuted  Irish  Presbyterians  that  found  its 
way  to  Boston  in  1729  and  dedicated  a  barn  to  the 
praise  and  glory  of  God,  built  a  church  on  Long 
Lane  (afterward  Federal  Street)  in  1744,  and 
about  1787  assumed  the  Congregational  form  of 
government,  so  building  up  the  pulpit  in  which 
Channing  was  to  stand  in  God's  good  time. 

It  is  one  thing  to  show  that  Boston  Unitarian- 
ism  was  not  a  graft  upon  the  English  Priestley- 
Belsham  stock,  and  another  to  prove  it  an  in- 
digenous growth.  There  were  Unitarians  before 
Belsham  and  Priestley,  —  notably  Clarke,  Newton, 
Milton,  Locke;  and  there  were  others,  contem- 
porary with  them,  who  were  not  of  their  Socinian 
mind,  —  Dr.  Richard  Price  among  them,  than 
whom  no  one  affected  Channing's  thinking  more 
profoundly.!  However  questionable  the  shape  of 
English  Unitarianism  (Socinianism)  to  Channing 
and  the  main  body  of  his  friends,  their  liberalism 
struck  its  roots  deep  down  into  a  soil  that  had  been 
wonderfully  enriched  by  such  fertilizing  books  as 

^  In   strang-e  contrast  with  Martineau's  early  indifference   to 
him.    See  Drummond's  Life  of  Martineau,  ii.  263. 


96  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

those  of  Emlyn,  Whiston,^  Taylor  ^  of  Norwich, 
Samuel  Clarke,  Locke,  Newton,  Lardner,  Price, 
Priestley,  Watts,  Lindsey,  and  many  others,  some 
of  them  Arians,  some  of  them  Socinians,  some  of 
them  modifying  the  conceptions  so  designated  with 
personal  accentuations. 

The  first  troubles  of  the  New  England  churches 
were  ecclesiastical,  but  those  caused  by  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson's Antinomianism  were  doctrinal,  and  they 
came  very  soon  (1637).  The  first  heretic  who 
tended  to  Unitarian  doctrine  has  a  statue  in  Spring- 
field, Mass.,  one  of  the  finest  works  St.  Gaudens 
has  produced.  It  is  the  statue  of  William  Pynchon. 
It  was  not  erected  to  him  as  a  Unitarian  heretic, 
but  as  the  founder  of  the  town.  His  book,  "  The 
Meritorious  Price  of  our  Redemption,"  was  an- 
swered by  John  Norton  by  direction  of  the  Gen- 
eral Court.  It  was  also  burned  in  the  marketplace, 
and  Pynchon  was  fined  one  hundred  pounds.  To 
avoid  the  infliction  of  some  sterner  penalty  he  took 

1  For  all  these  see  Leslie  Stephen's  English  Thought,  Tay- 
ler's  Heligious  Life  of  England,  Allen's  Unitarianism  since  the 
Reformation,  Bonet-Maury's  Early  Sources  of  English  Unitarian- 
ism, Brooke  Herford's  Beligion  in  England. 

^  It  is  interesting-  that  John  Taylor  of  Norwich  (to  be  distin- 
guished from  Henry  Taylor,  vicar  of  Portsmouth,  another  Arian, 
author  of  a  ponderous  Apology  for  Christianity),  whose  octagon 
church  excited  Wesley's  admiration,  did  much  to  create  that  tra- 
dition of  liberalism  in  Norwich  into  which  Martineau  was  born, 
and  that  in  Dublin,  his  first  parish,  Martineau  was  a  colleague  of 
Taylor's  venerable  grandson.  Dr.  John  Taylor  was  in  his  later 
years  the  first  principal  of  that  Warrington  Academy  from  which 
Manchester  New  College,  of  which  Martineau  was  for  a  long  time 
principal,  was  evolved. 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  97 

himself  off  to  England,  wherein,  as  he  was  dealing 
with  the  same  people  who  hung  Mary  Dyer  and 
other  Quakers  seven  and  eight  years  later,  he  was 
doubtless  wise.  The  institution  of  the  Halfway 
Covenant^  in  1662  was  a  sign  that  already  the 
non-church-members  of  the  community  were  numer- 
ous, in  its  turn  a  sign  that  doctrinal  laxity  had  set 
in.  That  the  "  Confession  of  1680  "  was  not  made 
binding  on  the  churches,  and  was  accepted  by  few 
of  them,  if  it  marks  no  increase  of  liberal  opinions, 
marks  that  independence  of  the  individual  churches 
which  was  ultimately  the  charter  of  societies  that 
had  become  Unitarian  to  mind  their  own  business 
and  expect  no  interference.  Solomon  Stoddard, 
grandfather  of  Jonathan  Edwards  and  pastor  of  the 
Northampton  Church  from  1669  to  1729,  was  for  a 
long  time  the  most  influential  preacher  in  the  Con- 
necticut valley.  He  made  the  Halfway  Covenant 
less  binding  by  admitting  non-regenerate  but  ear- 
nest-minded members  of  the  churches  to  the  Lord's 
Supper  (1706).  One  need  not  be  a  conscious  saint 
to  partake  of  this,  only  a  seeker  for  the  Christian 
life.  Here  was  a  step  towards  Bushnell's,  which 
was  first  Channing's  if  not  Fenelon's  doctrine  of 
Christian  Nurture  and  the  Educational  Church. 
If  it  was  true  that  Stoddard  was  ordained  unre- 
generate  and  was  converted  at  the  Lord's  Supper, 
there  was  a  strong  personal  equation  in  his  argu- 
ment.    It  converted  many  ministers  and  churches, 

1  Admitting  to  baptism  children  of  baptized  parents  who  were 
not  professing  Christians,  but  of  sober  and  reputable  life. 


98  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

but  not  Jonathan  Edwards,  who  in  1750  broke 
himself  in  his  attempt  to  reverse  the  Stoddardean 
innovation  and  was  driven  out,  to  find  among  the 
Stockbridge  Indians  leisure  to  write  his  treatise 
on  the  "  Freedom  of  the  Will." 

The  course  of  the  debate  has  no  clearer  witness 
than  the  annual  Convention  Sermon.  If  one  year 
this  leaned  to  the  liberal  side,  there  was  sure  to  be 
a  counterblast  the  next.  It  is  probable  that  a  little 
heresy  went  a  great  way  in  stirring  up  such  pure 
minds  as  those  of  Cotton  Mather  by  way  of  re- 
prisals. He  lamented  the  "  deplorable  degeneracy  " 
of  his  fellow  ministers  who  were  reading  Whiston 
and  Samuel  Clarke,  "  a  far  more  dangerous  abettor 
of  that  damnable  error,"  Arianism.  In  the  Con- 
vention Sermon  of  1722,  he  comes  to  the  rescue  of 
the  Trinitarian  doctrine,  with  all  the  italics  and 
exclamation  points  in  the  printer's  font.  He  de- 
mands. What  has  this  glorious  mystery  done  "  to 
deserve  Excommunication  from  the  House  of  our 
God  ?  "  Let  that  go  and  "  the  Glorious  God  will 
himself  be  gone ;  yea,  be  gone  far  from  a  forsaken 
Sanctuary^'  In  the  summer  of  1726,  the  Rev. 
Mr.  WiUiams  preached  to  the  same  effect,  incited 
mainly  by  the  anti-Trinitarian  movement  going  on 
among  English  and  Irish  Presbyterians,  and  by 
the  sympathy  manifested  towards  this  in  New  Eng- 
land, and  the  possible  infection  of  the  Irish  Pres- 
byterians coming  to  Long  Lane.  In  the  summer  of 
1743,  Nathaniel  Appleton  brings  a  like  railing  ac- 
cusation, yet  must  he  have  been  feared  by  the  more 


EVOLUTION  AND   REACTION  99 

sternly  orthodox  as  a  Danaan  bringing  gifts,  for 
he  denounced  theological  systems  and  the  endeavor 
to  "  make  everything  quadrate  with  a  particular 
scheme,"  as  tending  to  "darken  rather  than  en- 
lighten some  Christian  doctrines."  Here  was  a 
foregleam  of  Channing  and  his  kind,  also  of  Hamp- 
den at  Oxford,  who  in  1835  excited  Newman  to 
unseemly  wrath.  Mr.  Appleton's  uneven  progress 
was  profoundly  typical  of  the  general  aspect  of  the 
century  as  theologically  conditioned.  There  was 
little  all-round  heresy,  and  no  more  consistency  in 
the  holding  of  particular  views.  Here  the  advance 
was  along  the  Arminian,  there  along  the  Socinian 
or  Arian  line  ;  oftenest  along  Mr.  Appleton's,  —  a 
dislike  of  systematic  theology,  tending  to  a  dislike 
of  "man-made  creeds,"  and  an  insistence  on  the 
Christian  life  as  superior  to  these,  or  independent  of 
them.  Channing's  personal  experience  exhibited 
the  general  course  of  the  advance,  much  as  a  moun- 
tain's heightening  altitudes  do  the  extended  zones 
of  the  earth's  surface.  As  he  was  first  anti-Trin- 
itarian, then  anti-creed-and-system-mongering,  then 
anti-Calvinistic,  and  finally  opposed  to  such  less 
distinctly  Calvinistic  doctrines  as  those  of  vicari- 
ous atonement  and  eternal  punishment,  so,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  was  the  New  England  theological  mind. 
There  was  much  variety,  and  there  were  some  queer 
combinations.  It  was  customary  for  the  heresy 
hunters  to  hold  those  who  offended  in  the  least 
particular  to  have  offended  in  all,  and  men  were 
called  Arminians  or  Socinians  or  Arians  according 


100  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

as  one  title  or  the  other  seemed  likeliest  to  stick  or 
stain.  Time  and  again  the  protagonist  of  ortho- 
doxy found  himself  convicted  of  heresy  in  the  very 
act  of  trying  to  convict  some  brother  minister. 
Indeed  such  was  the  refinement  of  the  dogmatic 
system  that  a  man  could  hardly  think  about  it 
at  all  without  slij)ping  over  the  dangerous  verge. 
Dr.  Hopkins  was  to  the  elder  Buckminster  a  very 
grievous  heretic,  and  Jonathan  Edwards  probably 
did  more  than  any  one  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
except  possibly  Whitefield,  to  bring  in  the  Unita- 
rian day.  For  Edwards  was  nothing  if  not  ration- 
alist, his  chief  end  to  give  the  system  of  Calvin  a 
reasonable  appearance.  No  man  could  think  so 
powerfully  and  acutely  as  Edwards  did  and  not  set 
many  others  to  thinking  after  the  fashion  of 
Abraham's  going  out  from  Haran  —  not  knowing 
whither.  Emerson  has  not  exaggerated  the  pos- 
sibilities entailed  "  when  God  lets  loose  a  thinker 
on  the  planet."  Moreover,  Edwards  insisted  stoutly 
on  the  right  of  the  new  generations  to  revise  the 
thinking  of  the  old.  He  said,  as  if  he  had  set 
Milton's  trumpet  to  his  lips,  "  He  who  believes 
principles  because  our  forefathers  affirm  them 
makes  idols  of  them,  and  it  would  be  no  humility, 
but  baseness  of  spirit,  for  us  to  judge  ourselves  in- 
capable of  examining  principles  which  have  been 
handed  down  to  us." 

It  was  in  1734  that  Edwards's  dread  of  the  Ar- 
minian  invasion  roused  him  to  the  pitch  of  those 
terrible  sermons  which  produced  the  Great  Awaken- 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  101 

ing  of  the  following  year,  which  in  its  turn  incited 
Whitefield  to  cross  the  ocean  in  1740,  to  sow  New 
Eno^land  with  the  wheat  and  tares  of  an  enthu- 
siastic  piety  and  party  strife.  His  several  visits 
mark  the  stages  of  a  great  recoil  from  his  theology 
and  from  the  exaggerations  of  his  fiery  zeal,  and 
when  he  died  on  his  last  visit  (1770),  the  reaction 
still  went  on,  assisted  by  the  disintegrating  influ- 
ences attendant  on  the  Revolutionary  War.  Be- 
tween Whitefield's  first  visit  and  his  second,  in 
1744,  a  critical  temper  had  set  in,  to  which  Ed- 
wards's "  Thoughts  "  on  the  Revival,  and  Chaun- 
cy's  "  Seasonable  Thoughts,"  had  contributed  the 
weightier  part.  Before  Whitefield's  next  coming 
(1754),  the  reaction  had  so  gathered  strength  that 
it  had  swept  Edwards  from  his  Northampton  pulpit 
in  temporary  "  disgrace  with  fortune  and  men's 
eyes."  ^  But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  regard  the 
liberal  tendencies  of  the  half  century,  1750-1800, 
as  mainly  the  result  of  a  reaction  from  the  Great 
Awakening  and  the  Whitefield  revivals.  These 
dramatic  events  did  something  to  retard,  much  to 
accelerate  the  pace  of  liberal  theology,  but  this 
went  on  in  spite  of  them  or  because  of  them,  much 
as  it  would  have  done  if  they  had  not  intervened. 

^  But  Yale  and  Harvard  were  already  going  different  ways, 
and  while  Whitefield  was  received  coldly  in  Cambridge  on  his 
third  visit,  at  New  Haven  the  college  president  "  received  him 
as  if  he  were  a  gentleman  "  (the  second  pronoun  is  ambiguous), 
—  the  same  president  who  at  first  repelled  him  violently  and  ex- 
pelled the  saintly  Brainerd  because  of  his  too  active  sympathy 
with  him. 


102  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

They  made  the  process  of  amelioration  more  irregu- 
lar ;  they  did  not  seriously  affect  its  general  course 
and  end,  except  when  rising  from  the  dead  in  the 
last  decade  of  the  century  and  the  first  decade  of 
the  next,  when  there  was  that  very  positive  reaction 
from  the  conditions  brought  about  by  two  centuries 
of  gradual  evolution  which  names  this  chapter  of 
my  book. 

Two  men  stand  out  from  all  others  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  revolt  from  Whitefield's  Calvinism 
and  his  disorganizing  zeal,  —  Charles  Chauncy,  of 
the  First  Church  in  Boston,  and  Jonathan  Mayhew, 
of  the  West  Church.  In  one  particular  these  bore 
no  likeness  to  Whitefield's  description  of  the  New 
England  clergy  as  "dumb  dogs,  half  devils  and 
half  beasts,  unconverted,  spiritually  blind,  and  lead- 
ing their  people  to  hell."  They  were  not  dumb 
dogs.  Chauncy's  "  Seasonable  Thoughts  on  the 
State  of  Religion  in  New  England"  (1743)  is 
agreed  to  have  been  the  most  effective  criticism 
made  on  Whitefield  and  his  friends.  It  claimed 
for  a  diligent  use  of  the  ordinary  means  of  grace 
a  more  efficient  operation  than  that  of  revivalism, 
with  its  spasms  of  sense  and  sensibility.  In  the 
next  decade  there  was  a  great  battle  incidental  to 
the  long  war  of  the  Whitefieldians  and  their  oppo- 
nents, in  which  Chauncy  took  a  general's  part, 
convicting  one  of  the  Calvin  ists,  Clark  of  Dan  vers, 
of  plain  disloyalty  to  Calvin  in  his  declaration 
that  the  fate  of  children  dying  in  infancy  may  be 
left  to  "the  secret  Things  which  belong  to  God 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  103 

alone."  Calvinism  required  that  they  should,  ex- 
cept as  specially  elect,  suffer  the  utmost  penalty  o£ 
Adam's  sin.  Mayhewwas  diligent  in  republishing 
Emlyn's  and  other  English  Unitarian  books.  He 
was  one  of  the  most  vigorous  of  those  denouncing 
human  creeds  as  tests  of  doctrinal  soundness,  the 
sole  proper  test  being  "  the  infallible  word  of  God." 
(In  general  the  liberal  temper  was  intensely 
scriptural.)  He  was  not  without  a  pretty  gift  of 
satirical  writing,  contending  that  "  nonsense  and 
contradictions  can  never  be  too  sacred  to  be  ridicu- 
lous." "  A  burning  faggot,"  he  said,  "  may  set  our 
bodies  in  a  light  blaze,  but  it  has  no  tendency  to 
illuminate  the  understanding."  "  A  blow  with  a 
club  may  fracture  a  man's  skull,  but  I  suppose  he 
will  not  think  and  reason  the  more  clearly  for  that, 
though  he  may  possibly  believe  the  more  ortho- 
doxly  after  his  brains  are  knocked  out  than  while 
he  continues  in  his  senses."  Till  the  revivalists 
"  have  lost  all  human  understanding  they  think  it 
impossible  they  should  get  a  divine  one'^  Mayhew 
is  set  down  by  his  biographer  as  "  the  first  Cler- 
gyman in  New  England  who  expressly  and  openly 
opposed  the  scholastic  doctrine  of  the  Trinity." 
As  to  the  nature  of  Christ  he  was  more  Arian  than 
Socinian,  but  preferred  to  leave  this  matter  where 
it  is  left  by  the  New  Testament,  —  not  sharply 
defined.     Lemuel  Briant,^  of  Braintree,  did  about 

^  See  Charles  Francis  Adams's  account  of  Briant  in  Three 
Episodes  of  Massachusetts  History,  which  is,  however,  strangely 
defective  through  the  absence  of  any  mention  of  Briant' s  Uni- 


104  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

as  much  as  Chauncy  or  Mayhew  to  turmoil  the 
churches.  From  the  title  of  a  sermon  which  he 
preached  in  1749,  and  from  that  of  one  of  the 
opposing  screeds,  we  get  a  clear  impression  of  the 
acrid  humors  of  the  time.  Briant's  title  was,  "  The 
Absurdity  and  Blasphemy  of  depretiating  (sic) 
Moral  Virtue,"  and  the  answering  one,  "  The  Ab- 
surdity and  Blasphemy  of  substituting  the  personal 
Righteousness  of  Men  in  the  Room  of  the  Surety- 
Righteousness  of  Christ  in  the  important  Article 
of  Justification  before  God." 

But  the  liberal  theology  was  a  sporadic  growth, 
appearing  sometimes  where  there  was  least  sign  of 
any  careful  sowing.  In  New  Hampshire,  wrote 
Dr.  Bellamy,  the  liberals  had  "  got  things  so  ripe 
that  they  had  ventured  to  new  model  our  Shorter 
Catechism^  to  alter  or  entirely  leave  out  the  doc- 
trines of  the  Trinity^  of  the  Decrees^  of  our  first 
parents  being  created  holy,  of  original  sin,  Christ 
satisfying  divine  justice,  effectual  calling,  justifi- 
cation, etc.,  and  to  adjust  the  whole  to  Dr.  Taylor'' s 
scheme."  Edwards  at  Stockbridge,  too  deep  in  his 
"  Original  Sin  "  to  rise  to  the  occasion,  besought 
his  son-in-law.  President  Burr  of  Princeton,  father 
of  the  redoubtable  Aaron,  to  join  battle  with  the 
enemy.  Burr  did  so  in  a  treatise  on  the  "  Deity 
of  Christ,"  which  was  published  in  Boston,  as  if  to 

versalism.  The  account  is  incidental  to  a  history  of  the  Braintree 
church,  a  typical  example  of  the  ecclesiastical  evolution,  and,  as 
such,  deserving-  attention.  It  is  interesting  to  imagine  how  Mr. 
Adams  would  have  made  the  chips  fly  from  the  old  blocks  if  he 
had  lived  a  century  or  two  ago. 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  105 

beard  the  roaring  Mayhew  in  his  den.  Mayhew 
was  a  prime  mover  of  the  j)olitical  revolution,  and 
in  1767  surrendered  his  pulpit  to  Simeon  Howard, 
who  was  denounced  as  viewing  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  as  "  an  antiquated  doctrine,  very  unfashion- 
able and  unmodish;  the  high  mode  to  laugh  at  it." 
The  next  year  Hopkins  preached  a  strong  Trini- 
tarian sermon  there  "  under  a  conviction  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  was  much  neg- 
lected, if  not  disbelieved  by  a  number  of  the  minis- 
ters in  Boston."  In  1780  —  I  quote  Dr.  Peabody 
—  there  was  only  one  Calvinist  preacher  in  Boston, 
the  minister  of  Brattle  Street  (Samuel  Cooper)  ; 
he  with  a  liberal  congregation,  while  Eckley  of  the 
Old  South  Church  was  a  liberal  with  an  orthodox 
congregation.  Such  mixtures  were  not  uncommon, 
and  generally  the  people  in  the  pews  were  more 
radical  than  the  ministers  in  the  pulpits,  an  inter- 
esting comment  on  the  charge  of  timid  reticence 
which  was  brought  against  the  ministers  a  little 
later,  and  which  has  persisted  till  our  time.  The 
first  President  Adams,  a  parishioner  of  Lemuel 
Briant,  could  count  many  Unitarian  ministers  be- 
sides his  own  as  early  as  1750,  and  lawyers,  phy- 
sicians, tradesmen,  and  farmers,  in  blocks  of  vari- 
ous size.    Mr.  Gannett' s  estimate  ^  of  the  two  special 

1  In  Ezra  Stiles  Gannett,  where  the  account  of  the  Unitarian 
evolution  before  Channing  is  the  best  I  know,  and  "  as  interesting 
as  a  novel."  But  see  also  for  this,  Allen's  Unitarianism  since  the 
Reformation,  Walker's  History  of  the  Congregational  Churches,  and 
Gillett's  invaluable  History  and  Literature  of  the  Unitarian  Con- 
troversy, with  its  bibliography  of  nearly  three  hundred  titles,  a 


106  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

emphases  that  were  growing  stronger  all  the  time, 
is  confirmed  by  all  the  literature  concerning  the  pe- 
riod which  I  have  looked  into  :  1,  few  fundamentals 
in  religion  ;  2,  no  human  creeds :  only  Bible  words 
for  Bible  mysteries. 

Strangely  enough  the  first  definite  schism  was 
not  at  any  point  along  the  Congregation alist  line, 
where  it  seemed  threatening,  but  at  the  fountain- 
head  of  New  England  Episcopacy,  King's  Chapel, 
Boston.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  first 
English  Unitarian  to  frankly  take  the  Unitarian 
name  was  an  Episcopalian,  the  saintly  Theophilus 
Lindsey,  whose  Essex  Place  Chapel,  London,  is 
now  a  place  "  whither  the  tribes  go,"  the  head- 
quarters of  the  British  and  Foreign  Unitarian  Asso- 
ciation. It  was  at  his  torch  that  James  Freeman, 
grandfather  by  marriage  of  James  Freeman  Clarke, 
kindled  his  own.  By  its  light  the  proprietors  of 
King's  Chapel  saw  their  way  in  1785  to  strike  out 
from  the  Prayer  Book  everything  savoring  of  Trin- 
itarian doctrine.  For  two  years  Freeman  had  been 
their  lay  reader,  and  he  remained  in  that  office  till 
1787,  when,  no  bishop  being  willing  to  lay  his 
hands  upon  a  head  so  full  of  heresy,  he  received 
lay  ordination  at  the  hands  of  his  vestrymen,  in 
the  validity  of  which  Freeman  was  indoctrinated 
by  a  Eev.  Mr.  Hazlitt  in  1784.  Mr.  Hazlitt  was 
an  English  clergyman  travelling  in  America,  and 
his  son,  William  Hazlitt,  the  brilliant  essayist,  who 

monument  of  diligence  and  carefulness,  needlessly  disfigured  in 
Bome  parts. 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  107 

in  due  time  would  be  Channing's  sharpest  critic, 
was  then  six  years  old.^  Freeman's  light  was  not 
hid  under  a  bushel,  but  set  on  a  high  candlestick. 
He  was  active  in  the  distribution  of  English  Uni- 
tarian books,  published  a  "  Scripture  Confutation  of 
the  Thirty-Nine  Articles,"  and  negotiated  the  gift 
of  Priestley's  works  to  Harvard  College.  The  ex- 
odus of  Boston  loyalists  during  the  Revolutionary 
War  had  brought  King's  Chapel  to  its  lowest  ebb. 
When  the  time  came  for  reconstruction  there  was 
young  blood  in  the  ascendant  whose  "moral  flow" 
was  away  from  all  things  English,  the  English 
Church  and  its  formularies  included.  There  were 
other  Episcopal  churches  which  the  new  wine  made, 
for  a  time,  unsteady  in  their  gait,  but  they  all 
settled  down  at  length  into  a  genial  acquiescence 
with  the  traditional  forms.^  Increasingly  loved 
and  venerated  till  his  death  in  1835,  it  is  probable 
that  Freeman's  close  alliance  with  the  English 
(Socinian)  Unitarians  made  him  a  questionable 
figure  in  the  eyes  of  Boston  Unitarians  of  the 
stricter  (Arian)  sort. 

The  minister  of  the  Federal  Street  Church,  from 
1787  till  his  death  in  1798,  was  Jeremy  Belknap, 

1  For  some  account  of  the  elder  Hazlitt's  stay  in  America,  see 
Birrell's  new  life  of  Hazlitt  in  English  Men  of  Letters,  which  is, 
however,  weak,  as  touching'  his  relation  to  King's  Chapel. 

2  See  Tiffany's  and  McConnell's  histories  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  the  United  States  for  evidence  of  the  liberal  tendencies 
of  Bishop  White  and  many  others  at  the  time  when  their  church 
was  setting  out  on  its  career  of  distinct  American  development. 
Also,  Annals  of  King^s  Chapel,  for  an  invaluable  mine  of  local 
ecclesiastical  history. 


108  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

one  of  our  best  early  historians  and  founder  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  In  1792  he 
published  a  Unitarian  sermon ;  in  1794  a  life  of 
Watts  with  that  of  Doddridge,  the  purpose  of 
which  was,  as  he  frankly  confessed,  to  exhibit  Dr. 
Watts's  anti-Trinitarian  opinions ;  in  1795  a  "  Col- 
lection of  Psalms  and  Hymns,"  in  which  no  hymn 
or  version  of  a  psalm  was  included  that  ascribed 
to  Jesus  the  honor  and  worship  due  to  God  alone.^ 
The  book  was  adopted  by  a  good  many  congrega- 
tions, and  was  "  a  sign  to  be  spoken  against "  with 
others.  It  was  one  of  many  straws  that  showed 
which  way  the  wind  was  blowing.  But  that  the 
differentiation  of  orthodox  and  heretic  had  as  yet 
hardly  begun  was  evident  from  the  fact  that  the 
redoubtable  Jedidiah  Morse,  the  father  of  the 
Unitarian  controversy,  ^^ar  excellence^  collaborated 
with  Dr.  Belknap  in  the  making  of  the  book,  fur- 
nishing the  httle  marks  which  indicated  the  sharp 
key  or  the  flat  in  which  the  hymns  should  be 
sung. 

Meantime,  partly  parallel  with  the  development 
I  have  traced  and  partly  in  close  affiliation  with  it, 
was  the  development  of  Universalism.     Murra}', 

^  The  Brooklyn  Historical  Society  has  a  copy,  beautifully 
bound  in  red  morocco,  which  was  the  personal  property  of  Jane 
Sigourney,  who  married  Frederick  A.  Farley,  whose  first  pastorate 
was  in  Providence,  R.  I.,  his  second,  more  than  twenty  years  in 
length,  in  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.  All  the  psalms  are  versified,  and 
there  are  three  hundred  additional  hymns.  Watts's  hymns  were 
not  all  approved.  The  prophet  Jeremy  remarks  in  his  preface 
that  Watts  uses  terms  of  endearment  in  speaking  of  God  with 
"  a  disgusting  licence." 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  109 

who  died  in  tlie  very  year  when  Dr.  Morse  con- 
trived his  brilliant  artifice  for  converting  heresy 
into  schism  (1815),  was  a  Calvinist  in  his  major 
and  minor  premises,  but  drew  a  different  conclu- 
sion from  that  of  Edwards  and  Hopkins  :  only  the 
elect  were  saved,  but  everybody  was  elect ;  "As 
in  Adam  all  died,  so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made 
alive,"  as  good  a  text  as  any  controversialist  ever 
found  in  the  whole  Bible  armory,  its  edge  much 
dulled  by  the  grinding  of  Dr.  Orello  Cone  and 
other  modern  critics.  The  early  Universalist  soci- 
eties were  recruited  more  in  Baptist  and  Methodist 
quarters  than  among  the  Congregationalists,  and  on 
more  democratic  social  lines.  The  early  Unitari- 
ans, as  socially  aristocratic,  were  naturally  averse  to 
a  promiscuous  salvation.  Men  might  be  "  born  free 
and  equal"  (the  habitual  misquotation),  but  that 
they  died  so  was  another  matter,  not  to  be  lightly 
entertained.  There  had  been  Universalist  think- 
ing in  America  before  the  kindly  and  lachrymose 
Murray  came  over  and  found  a  church  without  a 
minister  awaiting  him  on  the  New  Jersey  shore. 
Chauncy,  of  Boston,  and  Briant,  of  Braintree 
(Quincy),  whom  we  have  already  met,  were  clearly 
committed  to  the  humaner  creed.  Adam  Streeter 
began  to  preach  Universalism  in  Rhode  Island, 
without  having  heard  of  Murray,  in  1777.  A  lit- 
tle later  came  Elhanan  Winchester.  In  his  diary 
Ezra  Stiles  compares  his  book  with  Chauncy's  and 
finds  it  much  more  important.  Winchester  started 
from  the  Arminian  side,  and  Murray,  starting  from 


110  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

the  Calvinistic,  declared  that  he  "  knew  of  nothuig 
further  from  true  Christianity  than  such  Univer- 
salism,"  but,  when  they  met,  he  could  not  resist 
the  tender  saintliness  of  Winchester's  face  and 
speech. 

In  1775  the  light  of  Universalism  dawned  upon 
the  soul  of  Caleb  Rich,  a  Baptist  Calvinist,  kick- 
ing against  the  pricks  of  an  inhuman  creed  amidst 
the  glory  of  the  New  Hampshire  hiUs.  He,  again, 
had  never  heard  of  Murray.  But  Rich  shines  less 
by  his  own  light  than  by  that  reflected  back  on 
him  from  his  son  in  the  spirit,  Hosea  Ballon,  of 
all  Universalist  chiefs  and  founders  easily  the  first. 
When  Ballou  preached  for  Murray,  who  had  come 
from  Gloucester  to  Boston  in  1793,  Mrs.  Murray 
instigated  a  hearer  to  stand  up  and  say,  "  That  is 
not  the  doctrine  usually  preached  in  this  place." 
And  it  was  not.  There  was  no  Calvinism  left  in 
it.  All  the  five  points  were  gone,  and  with  them 
the  Trinity  and  Vicarious  Atonement  and  Adam's 
Fall,  with  all  mankind  upon  his  back.  Ballou's 
book  on  the  Atonement  was  published  in  1805, 
when  Channing,  never  Trinitarian,  was  still  en- 
tangled in  the  meshes  of  the  Calvinistic  scheme, 
and  it  anticipated  the  full-grown  expression  of 
Channing's  thought  on  all  its  principal  lines,  with 
a  difference  in  the  way  of  viewing  the  relations  of 
the  present  and  the  future  life.  It  was  Ballou's 
doctrine  that  we  get  our  full  and  just  punishment 
in  the  body  for  sins  committed  in  the  body.  Was 
this  very  different  from  Emerson's  doctrine  that 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  111 

the  fruit  of  every  action  is  immediate  ?  It  seemed 
to  miss  the  fact  that  a  man's  character  is  the  result 
of  liis  experience,  and  himself  is  hell  or  heaven  as 
the  case  may  be,  and  hardly  to  be  made  very  dif- 
ferent by  the  beneficent  event  of  death,  though  we 
now  believe  much  more  in  the  effectiveness  of  the 
environment  than  formerly.  But  his  doctrine  in 
its  entirety  was  an  immense  correction  of  the  cur- 
rent Calvinism  and  transformed  the  Universalism 
that  he  found  growing  where  Murray  had  diligently 
sowed  the  seeds  and  watered  them  ^vith  his  tears. 
From  1790  to  1800  Universalists  were  a  hetero- 
geneous body,  some  of  Murray,  some  of  Winchester, 
only  united  in  the  one  glorious  idea  that  at  last 
"  every  tongue  should  confess  and  every  knee  should 
bow."  By  1815  they  had  a  compact  body  of  ideas, 
the  ideas  which  Universalism  was  to  express  for 
the  next  half  century.  The  ideas  were  One  God 
the  Father,  Reconciliation  of  man  to  God  by  the 
self-sacrificing  spirit  of  Jesus,  the  sufficiency  of  our 
mortal  life  for  the  punishment  of  its  own  sins. 
Ballou  was  not  a  learned,  not  an  educated,  man, 
but  he  knew  his  one  book,  the  Bible,  as  well  as 
any  man  could  know  it  who  knew  no  other.  He 
was  a  great  preacher  and  he  was  a  greater  soul. 
It  was  not  by  exegesis  but  by  humanity  that  he 
prevailed.  He  warmed  the  heart  of  the  Eternal, 
as  the  Calvinists  had  made  him,  at  his  own  loving 
breast.     We  cannot  honor  him  too  much.^ 

1  See  John  Coleman  Adams's  address,  **  Hosea  Ballou,"  at  the 
Universalist  Convention  in  Buffalo,  1901. 


112  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Such  movements  as  this  of  Ballou's  and  of  Mur- 
ray's before  him,  together  with  the  more  general 
tendency  to  liberal  opinions,  could  not  but  excite 
a  reaction  in  the  minds  of  the  more  conservative 
representatives  of  the  creed  that  was  being  every- 
where diminished  and  assailed.  The  sense  of 
danger  must  have  been  aggravated  a  great  deal  by 
the  appearance  of  Thomas  Paine's  "  Age  of  Rea- 
son" in  1794,  and  by  the  vogue  to  which  it 
speedily  attained.  Men's  agitated  nerves  so  dis- 
turbed their  vision  that  to  confound  Paine's  ideas 
with  those  of  the  Boston  liberals  was  most  natural. 
A  composite  photograph  was  made  of  all  the  liberal 
and  radical  doctrines  of  the  time,  and  with  the  re- 
sulting ogre  good  clergymen  and  laymen  frightened 
themselves  and  each  other  in  a  quite  dreadful 
fashion.  And  indeed  there  was  good  ground  for 
fear  if  the  traditional  orthodoxy  was  an  ideal  con- 
struction of  the  world,  deserving  of  men's  love  and 
praise.  Something  must  be  done  to  stay  the  in- 
coming tide  of  liberalism,  or,  continuing  to  rise  as 
it  had  risen  from  1750  to  1790,  there  would  not 
be  a  New  England  steeple  left  in  sight  at  the  ex- 
piration of  another  period  of  equal  length.  Some- 
thing was  done.  There  was  an  orthodox  reaction.^ 
It  began  about  1790.  It  forced  the  Unitarian 
schism  in  the  course  of  the  next  forty  years,  not 
putting  forth  half  its  strength  until  twenty-five  of 
these  had  passed.  There  never  was  a  quieter  or  more 

1  For  details  see  Williston  Walker's  History  of  the  Congrega- 
tional Churches  in  the  United  States,  chap,  ix.,  pp.  309-369. 


EVOLUTION  AND  REACTION  113 

natural  evolution  than  that  of  New  England  liber- 
alism in  the  eighteenth  century.  There  never  was 
a  more  conscious  and  deliberate  reaction  than  that 
which  thwarted  this  evolution  for  a  time  and 
divided,  until  now,  the  Congregationalist  fold. 
That  the  men  of  the  reaction  were  as  conscientious 
and  well  meaning  as  the  men  of  the  reform  needs 
hardly  to  be  said.  That  some  of  them  were  much 
more  in  earnest  does  not  admit  of  any  doubt. 

This  reaction  was  intimately  associated  with  the 
expansion  of  New  England,  the  overflow  of  its 
population  into  neighboring  States,  the  closer  affili- 
ation of  New  England  Congregationalism  with  the 
Presbyterianism  of  New  York  resulting  in  the 
"Plan  of  Union"  (1801)  ;  and  it  was  illustrated 
by  a  series  of  revivals,  widely  extended,  an  out- 
burst of  missionary  zeal,  and  a  sharp  awakening  to 
the  presence  and  the  danger  of  the  liberal  develop- 
ment. A  local  revival  in  Maine  (1791)  soon  be- 
came general  throughout  New  England.  A  Hart- 
ford pastor,  using  the  swollen  diction  which  was 
the  trademark  of  the  time,  said  of  the  last  decade  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  "  I  saw  a  continued  succes- 
sion of  heavenly  sprinklings  ...  in  Connecticut, 
until  in  1799  I  could  stand  at  my  door  in  New 
Hartford,  .  .  .  and  number  fifty  or  sixty  congre- 
gations laid  down  in  one  field  of  divine  wonders, 
and  as  many  more  in  different  parts  of  New  Eng- 
land." On  the  tide  of  this  revival  came  in  the 
new  Sunday-school  organization,  the  missionary 
beginnings  of  Mills,  Newell,  and  Judson,  an  exten- 


114  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

sion  of  home  missionary  work,  and  —  tlie  special 
matter  of  our  immediate  concern  —  a  searching 
of  the  joints  and  marrow  of  all  those  deliberately 
opposed  or  negatively  indifferent  to  the  revival, 
or  betraying  liberal  tendencies  in  any  way,  shape, 
or  manner.  Into  the  turmoil  of  this  inquisition 
many  were  drawn  who  did  little  credit  to  them- 
selves or  to  their  cause,  many  who  lost  little  of  the 
beauty  of  their  holiness  in  the  hot  and  dusty  fray, 
and  one  who  stands  out  from  all  others,  less  be- 
cause of  the  ethical  nobility  and  the  sainthood 
which  he  shared  with  many  upon  his  own  and  the 
opposing  side  than  because  of  the  clean  vigor  that 
he  brought  to  the  defence  of  the  assailed  and  his 
entire  and  perfect  apprehension  of  the  nature  and 
the  magnitude  of  the  interests  involved.  There  is 
little  need  that  I  should  write  his  name. 


'^^     <!yo     <*-)W».  o.  JL      o-,^  1^        <o  rutX^.     \-A. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    DIVIDED    FOLD 

The  year  1815,  as  significant  of  the  beginning 
of  the  Unitarian  Controversy,  is  hardly  less  precise 
than  the  majority  of  dates  commonly  accepted  as 
the  starting  points  of  great  events.  Its  relative 
significance,  as  we  shall  see,  was  very  great,  but 
we  have  seen  already  that  the  "  seeds  and  weak 
beginnings  "  of  the  liberal  thought  were  germinat- 
ing all  the  way  along  from  the  early  settlement 
of  New  England,  and  pushing  through  the  hard 
ground  into  the  windy  air  all  through  the  eighteenth 
century.  Even  the  schism  of  the  Unitarians  from 
the  orthodox  body  —  more  properly,  perhaps,  the 
schism  of  the  Calvinists  from  the  liberal  body  — 
was  not  a  sudden  cleft.  All  the  way  along  from 
the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  and  from  farther 
back,  there  were  signs  of  a  definitive  partition  of 
the  divided  house,  —  on  the  one  hand  the  growing 
strength  of  the  liberal  party,  on  the  other  an  in- 
creasing disposition  to  exclude  the  liberals  from  fel- 
lowship or  to  withdraw  from  their  assembly.  In 
the  event  the  schism  was  predominantly  an  ortho- 
dox schism.  Not  that  the  liberals  were  the  main 
body  of  Congregation  alists  (they  were  so  in  Bos- 


116  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

ton  and  its  vicinity,  but  not  far  beyond),  but  that 
it  was  the  orthodox  party  that  forced  the  separa- 
tion, the  liberals  pleading  against  it  with  a  pathetic 
earnestness  which  the  more  kindly  hearts  or  less 
conscientiously  dogmatic  minds  could  not  with- 
stand. Meantime  each  side  pressed  steadily  for 
the  advantage,  sometimes  with  equal  disregard  of 
that  Christian  spirit  in  which  their  inevitable  dif- 
ference should  have  been  met. 

It  was  now  (after  1800)  advance  and  opposition 
all  along  the  line,  the  opposition  generally  the 
more  self-conscious  and  more  vigorous.  Just  as 
the  century  turned,  the  church  in  Plymouth,  that 
of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  became  quite  definitely  Uni- 
tarian, the  more  orthodox  of  the  church  proper 
(the  body  of  communicants)  soon  afterward  with- 
drawing and  setting  up  for  themselves.  Generally, 
as  the  gulf  widened,  the  "  church  "  was  found  on 
one  side  of  it  —  the  orthodox  —  and  the  "society," 
owning  the  church  property,  upon  the  other.  Here 
was  a  fruitful  source  of  acrimony,  with  grave  in- 
justice perpetrated  here  and  there.  Its  more  pro- 
found significance  was  that  with  the  "  church  '* 
went  often  the  more  spiritual  elements  to  leaven 
the  new  lump,  —  a  far-reaching  influence.  But 
there  were  able,  shrewd,  and  active  non-church- 
members  of  both  kinds.  Notably  the  lay  founders 
of  the  Andover  Theological  School  were  men  who 
had  not  "  experienced  religion."  The  action  of 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers'  church  was  an  ominous  busi- 
ness.    More  than  a  hundred  churches  of  the  Puri- 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  117 

tan  founding^  followed  its  lead  upon  the  lines  of 
Pastor  Robinson's  prophecy,  *'  There  is  more  truth 
yet  to  break  out  from  God's  word."  In  1802,  Rev. 
Samuel  Worcester  was  dismissed  from  the  Fitch- 
burg  pulpit  by  the  society  in  opposition  to  the 
wishes  of  the  church.  He  went  to  Salem  and  there 
nursed  his  wrath  for  thirteen  years,  and  kept  it 
warm  until  the  striking  of  his  hour.  The  starting 
of  the  "  Monthly  Anthology  "  (1803)  by  the  liberal 
party  brought  Jedidiah  Morse,  of  Charlestown,  to 
the  fore  with  the  "  Panoplist,"  pledged  to  the  use 
of  its  full  armor  for  the  defence  of  the  beleaguered 
faith.  That  Channmg  sometimes  wrote  for  it  was 
proof  that  the  line  of  division  was  not  yet  sharply 
drawn,  or  that  he  had  not  yet  made  his  final  choice. 
On  both  sides  the  event  was  seen  to  be  critical 
when  in  1805  Henry  Ware  was  made  Hollis  Pro- 
fessor of  Theology  in  Harvard  College.  The  col- 
lege became  Unitarian  by  this  act,  which  excited 
violent  opposition,  the  redoubtable  Morse  heading 
it  with  a  vigorous  pamphlet,  which  was  practically 
the  first  number  of  the  "  Panoplist."  There  were 
other  reprisals.  Eckley,  the  hberal  minister  of  the 
Old  South,  was  dead,  and  the  conservative  congre- 


1  Notable  examples  making  much  noise  and  causing  much  ex- 
citement at  the  time  were  those  of  John  Sherman  and  Abiel  Ab- 
bot in  Connecticut,  where  the  semi-Presbyterian  Consociation 
made  heresy  a  more  punishable  offence.  Sherman's  book  (1805) 
"  was  the  most  positive  anti-Trinitarian  treatise  that  had  yet  origi- 
nated in  New  England  "  {sic  Walker's  Congregational  Churches). 
For  both  cases  see  Gillett's  Unitarian  Controversy,  pp.  249, 250 ; 
259-261. 


118  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

gation,  under  the  guidance  of  Dr.  Morse,  chose  a 
strict  Calvinist  for  the  succession.  Another  note 
of  the  reaction  was  the  settlement  of  Codman  by  the 
Dorchester  society,  after  the  frankest  exposition 
of  his  Calvinistic  views,  Channing  preaching  the 
ordination  sermon  and  Morse  taking  part  in  the 
service,  another  sign  of  the  stiU  wavering  line  of 
cleavage  and  of  Channing' s  slow  development,  his 
sermon,  above  mentioned,  witnessing.  In  1810, 
Dr.  Porter,  of  Koxbury,  had  declared,  in  the  Con- 
vention Sermon,  that  of  the  whole  list  of  orthodox 
doctrines,  including  eternal  punishment,  neither 
the  belief  or  rejection  of  one  of  them  was  essential 
to  Christian  faith  and  character.  What  wonder 
that  it  seemed  necessary  to  "  the  party  of  the  other 
part "  to  bring  a  sturdy  Calvinist  to  Boston,  from 
whose  preaching  sprang  the  new  Park  Street 
Church,  built  expressly  to  stand  four  square  to 
every  liberal  assault  and  superheat  the  controver- 
sial air.  Mr.  Codman's  Dorchester  congregation 
soon  found  that  they  had  reckoned  without  a  suf- 
ficient knowledge  of  their  minister.  He  refused 
to  exchange  with  liberal  ministers,  and  by  a  small 
majority  it  was  voted  by  the  society  that  "  his  con- 
nection with  it  had  become  extinct."  Seventy-one 
male  and  one  hundred  and  eighty-three  female  mem- 
bers of  the  church  and  society  protested  vigorously. 
There  was  a  first  council  and  a  second.  Another 
minister  was  placed  in  the  pulpit,  and  the  ap- 
proaches to  it  were  guarded  against  Mr.  Codman, 
who,  nevertheless,  preached  from  the  lower  plat- 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  119 

form ;  if  simultaneously  with  the  other  minister 
there  must  have  been  a  confusion  of  tongues. 
Finally  the  moderator's  casting  vote  gave  Mr.  Cod- 
man's  side  the  victory,  and  all  the  exclusionists 
round  about  took  cheerful  heart.  There  were  ven- 
tures towards  a  new  style  of  Congregationalism, 
akin  to  the  Connecticut  Consociation,  to  work  the 
exclusive  policy.^  But  not  even  the  most  orthodox 
could  be  relied  on  for  this  retrogression.  Nathanael 
Emmons,  stoutest  of  them  all,  did  more  than  any 
one  to  give  it  pause.  "  Association,"  he  maintained, 
"leads  to  Consociation,  Consociation  to  Presbyte- 
rianism,  Presbyterianism  to  Episcopalianism,  and 
Episcopalianism  to  Popery."  The  strength  of  the 
liberals  was  largely  in  their  Congregational  tradi- 
tion. "  Protestantism,"  said  Dr.  Holmes,  "  means. 
Mind  your  own  business."  Congregationalism 
meant  the  same  thing,  more  clearly.  If  the  con- 
gregations were  well  satisfied  with  their  liberal 
ministers,  it  was  nobody  else's  business. 

The  reaction  took  on  many  forms,  one  of  the 
most  obvious  the  establishment  of  the  Andover 
Theological  Seminary  in  1808.  This  was  a  coun- 
terblast to  the  accession  of  Harvard  College  to  the 
liberals  three  years  before.  It  was  brought  about 
by  mutual  concessions  of  the  Old  Calvinists  and 

1  Buckminster  wrote  Belsham,  Feb.  5,  1809,  "  There  is  among 
us  an  increasing-  party  of  Calvinists  and  Hopkinsians  who  wish  to 
promote  a  more  exclusive  union  on  the  basis  of  the  Westminster 
Confession  of  Faith  and  who  will,  therefore,  form  a  schism  in  our 
Congregational  connection  and  separate  from  us,  and  probably 
send  delegates  to  the  General  Assembly." 


120  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Hopkinsians,  Leonard  Woods,  who  was  something 
of  one  kind  and  the  other,  and  anything  against 
the  Hberals,  furnishing  the  callida  ju7ictura  of  the 
broken  chain.  If  there  had  been  no  hberals  form- 
ing so  strong  a  party  as  to  make  the  Hopkinsians 
and  Calvinists  fearful  of  their  ability  to  cope  with 
them  alone,  we  should  probably  have  had  a  Hop- 
kinsian  instead  of  a  Unitarian  schism.  In  New 
York,  where  there  were  no  liberals  to  speak  of,  the 
Calvinists  dealt  with  the  Hopkinsians  as  sternly  as 
these  rivals,  pooling  their  issues  in  Massachusetts, 
dealt  with  the  Unitarians.  They  declared  Hopkin- 
sianism  "  at  war  with  the  philosophy  of  the  human 
mind,  with  common  sense,  and  with  the  word  of 
the  living  God ;  "  that  it  ''  ought  to  be  exposed 
2Ci:Are])Tobated  in  the  most  decided  manner ;  "  that 
"  in  some  very  material  points  it  was  another 
Gospel."  It  was  "  time  they  [the  Hopkinsians] 
were  known  and  A  line  of  distinction  drawn." 
They  had  *'  gained  a  reputation  far  beyond  what 
nonsense  and  impiety  should  acquire."  They  were 
"  preparing  the  way  for  a  more  extensive  diffusion 
of  infidel  principles  and  even  of  atheism  in  our 
country."  It  takes  inappreciable  differences  to 
breed  the  bitterest  hostility.  Terrible  would  have 
been  the  battle  of  Old  Calvinists  and  Hojikinsians 
in  Massachusetts  but  for  the  common  foe  and  fear. 
It  was  no  easy  matter  to  compound  their  differences 
to  the  end  that  they  might  meet  the  liberals  with 
an  unbroken  front.  It  looked  as  if  there  would  be 
one  school  at  Andover  and  another  at  Newbury- 


THE   DIVIDED  FOLD  121 

port.  The  danger  was  so  imminent  that  the  Old 
Calvinists  bowed  their  proud  necks  to  the  Hop- 
kinsian  yoke.  The  resulting  creed  was  a  piece  of 
theological  patchwork  of  unrivalled  intricacy.  It 
aroused  young  Thacher,  not  yet  a  settled  minister, 
to  the  most  drastic  bit  of  writing  which  has  come 
down  to  us  with  his  superscription.  "  This  we 
believe,"  he  said,  "  to  be  the  first  instance  of  a 
creed's  being  originally  formed  with  a  designed 
ambiguity  of  meaning,  with  the  express  intention 
of  permitting  men  of  different  opinions  to  sign  it. 
The  circumstance  wliich  pollutes  the  old  age  of 
creeds  in  other  countries  pollutes  the  infancy  of 
this."  As  to  the  device  for  securing  an  unpro- 
gressive  orthodoxy  —  the  creed  to  be  re-signed 
every  five  years  by  the  professors  —  he  said,  "  It 
is  a  yoke  too  galling  to  be  endured  by  any  man 
who  has  felt  the  difficulty  of  investigating  truth." 
Apparently  this  prophecy  was  not  made  good.  For 
more  than  half  a  century  the  yoke  was  found  easy 
enough  by  such  deep  scholars  and  good  men  as 
Woods  and  Porter  and  Stuart  and  Park ;  then  it 
began  to  chafe  and  fret;  with  what  results  we 
know.  A  statute  unrepealed,  it  is  only  there  for 
lack  of  all  obedience. 

And  now,  before  passing  on  to  that  series  of 
events  which  made  the  year  1815  so  memorable  in 
Channing's  life  and  in  the  history  of  New  England 
Congregationalism,  let  us  go  back  a  little  and  see 
how  Channing  had  been  musing  that  such  a  fire 
should  burn  in  those  letters  and  sermons  that  were 


122  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

his  contribution  to  that  controversy  which  found 
the  Congregational  churches  at  least  formally 
united  and  left  them,  when  the  storm  abated,  two 
distinct  bodies  of  believers,  less  sadly  alienated  in 
their  minds  than  in  their  hearts. 

We  have  seen  that  Channing,  never  a  Trinita- 
rian, was  during  the  first  years  of  his  ministry  not 
only  somewhat  evangelical^  in  his  thought  and 
temper,  but  even  Calvinistic,  the  profound  influ- 
ence of  Hopkins  and  his  own  miserable  health  con- 
spiring to  this  end.  Yet  even  the  first  years  of 
his  ministry  —  even  his  first  sermon  !  —  had  inti- 
mations of  his  maturest  thought  and  spirit;  and 
these,  not  steadily,  but  with  some  wavering,  became 
more  definite  as  he  settled  to  his  work  and  found 
himself  obliged  to  approve  some  men  and  things 
and  withstand  others,  as  the  liberal  sentiments  of 
the  community  gathered  strength  and  the  reaction 
became  more  exclusive  in  its  temper  and  more 
definite  in  its  aims.  What  we  seem  to  find  very 
clearly  is  that  he  arrived  at  liberal  principles 
sooner  than  at  Unitarian  doctrines  ;  that  his  larger 
and  more  characteristic  thoughts  anticipated  the 
minor  Unitarian  expression.  A  noble  confidence 
in  reason,  a  fear  of  worse  results  from  its  repres- 
sion or  neglect  than  from  its  free  exercise,  distrust 
of  theological  precision  as  making  for  sectarian 
division,  the    insistence    upon    character  as  supe- 

^  I  use  the  word  here  and  elsewhere  protestingly  to  express 
those  traditional  aspects  of  orthodoxy  which  stop  short  of  the 
five  characteristic  points  of  Calvinism. 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  123 

rior  to  creed,  a  lofty  faith  in  the  Eternal  Father- 
hood and  in  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  —  such 
was  the  warp  of  his  religion,  while  for  the  woof 
there  was  material  of  quite  different,  not  to  say 
inferior,  grade.  There  was  as  yet  no  "  wholeness 
of  tissue"  in  his  web  of  thought.  There  were 
giants  in  those  days  among  his  opinions  and  be- 
liefs, but  the  traditional  conceptions  walked  in  and 
out  between  their  legs,  either  unnoticed  or  toler- 
ated with  a  certain  proud  indifference,  so  confi- 
dent was  he  of  the  superior  energy  of  his  essential 
thought. 

The  eagle  suffers  little  birds  to  sing-, 

And  is  not  careful  what  they  mean  thereby, 

Knowing  that  with  the  shadow  of  his  wing 
He  can  at  pleasure  stint  their  melody. 

No  feature  of  Channing's  early  mind  was  more 
prominent  than  a  devout  biblicism.  He  and  his 
liberal  friends  were  much  more  biblical  than  the 
more  orthodox.  If  there  was  "  pride  of  reason  " 
anywhere  it  was  with  those  who  fashioned  elabo- 
rate creeds  that  had  no  Bible  warrant.  It  was 
because  the  Bible  had  no  "  clear  word  of  prophecy  " 
about  the  nature  of  Christ  and  the  Atonement  that 
the  liberals  were  vague  and  hesitating  as  to  these 
matters ;  and  Channing  was  so  to  a  remarkable 
degree  his  whole  life  long. 

It  is  probable  that  through  his  personal  sympa- 
thies with  Buckminster,  and  more  especially  with 
Thacher,  whom  he  loved  so  much,  Channing's 
attraction  to  the  liberal  party  was  much  enhanced. 


124  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

but  one  has  only  to  follow  the  course  of  his  thought 
from  1803  to  1815  to  see  that  such  events  as 
those  of  the  later  year  were  bound  to  conquer  his 
distaste  for  controversy  and  carry  him,  full  armed, 
into  the  fight  which  he  had  vainly  hoped  to  make 
impossible. 

In  1806  he  seems  to  speak  as  consciously  con- 
servative in  opinion,  yet  from  the  standpoint  of 
religious  liberty :  "I  cannot  charge  a  man  with 
damnable  heresy  unless  I  see  that  his  sentiments 
prove  an  opposite  temper,  or,  at  least,  exclude  the 
exercise  of  Christian  love."  A  little  later  his 
grandfather  complains  that  Channing's  standard  is 
''' not  particular  enough."  "But  this,"  the  grand- 
son answers,  "  is  the  distinguishing  feature  of  our 
system  of  liberality.  The  greater  the  variety  of 
sentiments  with  which  a  system  will  harmonize,  or 
the  fewer  its  fundamentals,  the  more  worthy  it  is 
of  liberal  minds."  Here,  then,  we  have  the  con- 
servative thought  and  the  liberal  disposition  side 
by  side.  In  1807,  in  another  letter  to  his  grand- 
father, a  devout  Hopkinsian,  he  is  clearly  jus- 
tifying his  tolerance  for  others,  while  himself 
consciously  orthodox.  "  Taught  by  experience  to 
know  my  own  blindness,  shall  I  speak  as  if  I  could 
not  err,  and  as  if  [others]  might  not,  in  some  dis- 
puted points,  be  more  enlightened  than  myself  ?  " 
In  1811  he  writes  of  a  doughty  assailant  of  Hop- 
kins's and  other  departures  from  Old  Calvinism, 
"  I  can  only  lament  that  such  powers  are  not 
employed  in   recommending  a  purer  and  simpler 


THE  DIVIDED   FOLD  125 

form  of  Christianity.  ...  I  cannot  suffer  even  a 
superior  to  strip  my  religion  of  its  reasonableness, 
beauty,  and  simplicity."  Here  were  the  marks  of 
his  high  calling  plain  enough.  A  year  later  we 
have  views  of  the  Lord's  Supper  in  sharp  contrast 
with  the  Edwardsian  standard,  "  Saints  only  need 
apply."  He  looked  into  his  own  heart  and  wrote, 
Dec.  29,  1812,  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  the 
Calvinistic  spell  upon  his  mind  had  wholly  lost  its 
power :  — 

I  know  that  Calvinism  is  embraced  by  many  excel- 
lent people,  but  I  know  that  on  some  minds  it  has  the 
most  mournful  effects,  that  it  spreads  over  them  an  im- 
penetrable gloom,  that  it  generates  a  spirit  of  bondage 
and  fear,  that  it  chills  the  best  affections,  that  it  represses 
virtuous  effort,  that  it  sometimes  shakes  the  throne  of 
reason  .  .  . 

The  passage  breaks  off  sharply  in  the  middle  of 
a  sentence,  and  what  follows  is  not  addressed  to  his 
correspondent :  — 

O  my  merciful  Father  !  I  cannot  speak  of  thee  in  the 
language  which  this  system  would  suggest.  No  !  Thou 
hast  been  too  kind  to  deserve  this  reproach  from  my  lips. 
Thou  hast  created  me  to  be  happy ;  thou  caUest  me  to 
virtue  and  piety,  because  in  these  consists  my  felicity ; 
and  thou  wilt  demand  nothing  from  me  but  what  thou 
givest  me  ability  to  perform. 

Farther  along  in  the  same  letter  he  objects  to 
"  that  unscriptural  phrase, '  the  merits  of  Christ,' " 
and  writes  of  the  Son's  equality  with  the  Father  as 


126  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

"  the  darkest  of  all  doctrines."  ^  He  urges  his 
friend  to  read  Noah  Worcester's  "  Bible  News  of 
Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,"  and  in  1813  we 
find  him  writing  to  the  peaceful  author  of  that 
bomb-like  book,  urging  him  to  accept  the  editor- 
ship of  the  "  Christian  Disciple,"  a  new  magazine, 
in  place  of  Andrews  Norton's  "  General  Reposi- 
tory" (1812,  1813),  which  had  succeeded  the  less 
theological  and  polemic  "  Anthology."  The  "  Pan- 
oplist's "  demand  for  "  the  immediate  erection  of 
ecclesiastical  tribunals  "  required  a  counteracting 
influence.  Channing  would  not  have  Worcester 
devote  the  new  magazine  to  any  particular  view  of 
"  the  person  and  dignity  of  Christ." 

We  have  no  desire  to  diffuse  any  religious  peculiar- 
ities. Our  great  desire  is  to  preserve  our  fellow  Chris- 
tians from  the  systematic  and  unwearied  efforts  which  are 
making  to  impose  on  them  a  human  creed  and  to  infuse 
into  them  angry  and  bitter  feelings  towards  those  who 
differ  from  them. 

A  comparison  of  the  "  Christian  Disciple  "  with 
the  "  Panoplist "  is  certainly  very  favorable  to  the 
liberals  as  less  controversial  than  the  orthodox. 
In  ten  years  their  new  organ  contained  but  six 
controversial  articles,  and  the  "  Christian  Exami- 
ner" (1824-1869)  had  as  clean  a  record,  while 
the  "  Panoplist  "  and  "  Spirit  of  the  Pilgrims  "  re- 

^  He  had  Waterland,  that  great  Trinitarian  coryphaeus,  to  back 
him  here  -with  his  declaration,  "  You  can  never  fix  any  certain 
principle  of  individuation,"  i.  e.,  between  the  Father  and  Son, 
and  the  ideas  of  Being  and  Person. 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  127 

sounded  with  the  din  of  controversial  zeal  as  their 
most  characteristic  note. 

Already  in  1811  Channing  was  stating  the  im- 
portance of  free  inquiry  so  clearly  and  forcibly 
that  there  was  little  room  for  further  gain  in  this 
particular.  He  wrote  and  underscored,  "  The,  only 
way  of  "producing  uniformity  is  to  encourage  seri- 
ous and  earnest  inquiry. ^^  It  was  upon  a  spirit 
tempered  to  this  fineness,  a  man  singularly  sen- 
sitive to  any  imputation  cast  upon  his  personal 
honor,  and  dreading  the  spirit  of  exclusion  in  re- 
ligion as  he  dreaded  nothing  else,  that  the  events 
of  1815  came  with  an  earthquake  force,  shaking 
his  island  of  reserve  from  that  propriety  which 
hitherto  it  had  observed. 

Early  in  the  year  1815  Dr.  Jedidiah  Morse,  on 
whose  tracks  we  have  come  several  times  already,^ 

^  See  his  Life  by  Dr.  W.  B.  Sprag-ue,  compiler  of  the  invalu- 
able Annals  of  the  American  Pulpit.  The  book  contains  a  portrait 
•which  might  be  a  composite  photograph  of  all  the  sourer  saints  in 
the  Puritan  calendar.  Yet  he  not  only  suffered  the  little  children 
to  come  unto  him  but  welcomed  them ;  Lucy  Osgood,  daughter 
of  Dr.  Osgood,  of  Medford,  and,  like  him,  of  blessed  memory, 
tells  how  pleasantly,  though  he  warned  her  that  Worcester's 
Bible  News  was  a  short  road  to  "  the  everlasting  bonfire." 
Strangely  enough  one  of  his  kindest  actions  was  the  rescue  from 
debt  of  the  father  of  Thomas  Whittemore,  that  hard-hitting 
Universalist.  He  was  born  in  Woodstock,  Conn,,  in  1761,  licensed 
to  preach  in  1785,  settled  in  Charlestown,  Mass.,  in  1789,  on  a 
salary  of  $11  per  week,  house  and  firewood.  One  dollar  a  week  he 
relinquished  because  his  people  had  not  yet  recovered  from  the 
burning  of  their  homes  by  the  British  soldiers  in  1775,  after  the 
battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  Old  experience  attained  to  nothing  of 
prophetic  strain  in  Dr.  Belknap's  installation  sermon  from  the 
text,  "  Neither  as  lording  it  over  God's  heritage,  but  as  ensamples 


128  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

always  keen  upon  the  scent  of  heresy,  ran  to  cover 
game  of  unprecedented  size  and  danger  to  tlie  fold. 
This  game  was  Belsham's  life  of  Theophihis  Lind- 
sey,  the  saintly  Unitarian  founder  to  whom  Belsham 
had  succeeded  in  the  ministry  of  the  first  English 
Unitarian  church  which  frankly  took  the  Unitarian 
name.  Belsham  was  a  lesser  light  than  Lindsey, 
Priestley,  or  Price,  the  three  Unitarian  leaders,  in 
conjunction  with  whose  names  we  often  find  his 
own.  Belsham  was  a  vigorous  and  manly  follower 
on  Priestley's  materialistic  line.  His  life  of  Lindsey 
contained  a  chapter  on  American  Unitarianism 
which  was  animated  by  a  desire,  if  not  a  determi- 
nation, to  make  the  Americans  speak  out  more 
boldly  and  make  a  party  by  themselves  after  the 


to  the  flock."  No  man  of  his  time  so  lorded  it  over  God's  heri- 
tage as  Dr.  Morse.  He  was  the  head  and  front  of  orthodox 
opposition  to  the  liberal  offending.  At  every  stage  of  that  oppo- 
sition he  was,  if  not  easily  first,  always  well  in  the  lead.  The  in- 
stitution of  the  General  Association,  the  attempted  Consociation, 
the  arming  of  the  Panoplist,  the  criticism  of  Ware's  Harvard  ap- 
pointment, the  Andover  counterblast  to  this,  the  building  and 
manning  of  the  Park  Street  Church,  —  in  all  these  pithy  and 
momentous  enterprises  his  was  an  active  and  aggressive  part. 
His  central  purpose  was  to  unite  the  Old  Calvinists  and  Hopkin- 
sians  in  opposition  to  the  liberals.  But  Unitarianism  and  Univer- 
salism  grew  rank  in  the  shadow  of  his  preaching,  and  his  own 
people  tired  of  him  and  turned  him  out.  Not  the  least  of  his 
distinctions  was  to  be  the  father  of  S.  F.  B.  Morse,  the  inventor 
of  the  electric  telegraph  and  the  founder  of  the  New  York  Acad- 
emy of  Design,  whom  I  knew  as  one  of  0.  B.  Frothingham's  de- 
voted adherents.  It  is  graved  upon  Jedidiah's  monument  that 
he  was  "The  Father  of  American  Geography,"  but  his  most 
characteristic  paternity  was  that  of  the  separation  of  the  New 
England  Congregational  churches  into  two  rival  sects. 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  129 

English  fashion.  Dr.  Morse  made  haste  to  believe 
that  the  book  had  been  practically  suppressed  on 
account  of  this  chapter.  It  is  certain  that  few 
copies  of  it  were  circulated  in  Boston  and  Cam- 
bridge. This  really  meant  that  few  had  any  liking 
for  Belsham's  Socinian  dogmatism.  Dr.  Morse's 
construction  was  different  and  not  wholly  wrong. 
It  was  that  the  Boston  liberals  were  afraid  to  have 
the  truth  come  out.  They  were,  because  it  was 
such  partial  and  misleading  truth.  The  facts  were 
generally  as  stated,  but  inferences  would  be  drawn 
from  them  that  would  be  cruel  and  unjust.  The 
event  more  than  justified  their  grave  anticipations 
and  their  fears. 

Dr.  Morse  was  so  much  impressed  by  Lord 
Chesterfield's  "  Letters  "  that  he  Bowdlerized  them 
for  Boston  use,  "  Chesterfield  on  Politeness,  im- 
proved by  Dr.  Morse."  He  now  set  out  to  improve 
on  Belsham's  chapter  on  American  Unitarianism. 
He  printed  it  separately  ^  in  a  pamphlet,  "  without 
note  or  alteration,"  as  deposed,  but  with  ten  pages 
of  preface  to  thirty-eight  of  borrowed  matter, 
abounding  in  adroit  insinuations  and  reproducing 

^  American  Unitarianism,  or  a  Brief  History  of  the  Progress 
and  Present  State  of  the  Unitarian  Churches  in  America.  Com- 
piled from  Documents  and  Information  Communicated  by  the 
Rev.  James  Freeman,  D.  D.,  and  William  Wells,  Jr.,  Esq.,  of  Bos- 
ton, and  from  other  Unitarian  gentlemen  in  this  country.  By  the 
Rev.  Thomas  Belsham,  Essex  Street,  London.  Extracted  from 
the  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  the  Rev.  Theophilus  Lindsey,  published 
in  London,  in  1812,  and  now  published  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Christian  Churches  in  this  country,  without  note  or  alteration. 
The  date  is  interesting  :  for  three  years  the  laws  which  Mr.  Bel- 
sham  had  laid  down  for  the  Americans  had  been  silent  in  the 
midst  of  arms. 


130  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

from  other  sources  Belsham's  elaborate  personal 
creed.  I  look  at  the  brown  old  pamphlet^  and 
wonder  that  so  great  a  matter  could  be  kindled  by 
so  little  fire.  But  it  was  the  improvement  that  was 
most  combustible.  This  was  a  review  of  the  pam- 
phlet in  the  "  Panoplist"  by  Jeremiah  Evarts,  father 
of  Senator  Evarts,  whom  Dr.  Morse  had  brought 
to  Boston  in  1810  to  edit  the  "Panoplist."  The 
review  was  ably  written  and  admirably  calculated 
to  do  the  mischief  it  was  contrived  to  bring  about. 
It  had  a  threefold  purpose  :  first,  to  identify  Amer- 
ican liberals  with  English  Unitarians ;  second, 
to  convict  the  former  of  dishonesty  in  covertly 
teaching  or  hypocritically  concealing  their  Unita- 
rian opinions ;  third,  to  demand  the  denial  to  all 
Unitarians  of  the  Christian  name  and  their  ex- 
clusion from  all  Christian  courtesy  and  fellowship. 
It  was  this  review,  with  its  damaging  reflections 
and  insinuations  and  its  exclusive  spirit,  that 
brought  the  Unitarian  Controversy  to  its  acutest 
stage  and  roused  William  Ellery  Channing,  now 
thirty-five  j^ears  old,  to  the  assumption  of  duties 
to  which  he  had  no  natural  inclination.  Yet,  for  a 
man  averse  to  controversy,  it  must  be  conceded 
that  he  had  for  it  an  aptitude  and  skill  second  to 

^  My  private  copy,  as  of  other  pamphlets  principal  to  the  con- 
troversy, was  first  owned  by  the  Hon.  Ezra  Starkweather,  of  Worth- 
ington,  Mass.  If  he  was  not  one  of  the  liberals,  he  was  a  man 
who  read  both  sides.  Then,  however,  almost  every  hUl  town  had 
its  group  of  deep-reading  and  deep-thinking  men ;  Chesterfield, 
my  own  summer  town,  a  very  notable  one,  with  Luther  Edwards 
for  preeminence,  elbow  on  knee  and  chin  on  hand,  when  he  would 
utter  oracles. 


THE  DIVIDED   FOLD  131 

none  of  those  who  were  eventually  drawn  in  to- 
wards the  storm  centre  and  there  behaved  them- 
selves, some  well,  and  others  not  so  well.  The  form 
of  Channing's  original  contribution  was  that  of  a 
letter  to  his  friend  Thacher,  with  whom  he  had 
talked  the  matter  over  carefully.  It  was  probably 
upon  Thacher's  urgency  that  Channing  accepted 
the  unwelcome  task.  Could  he  have  prevailed  on 
Thacher  to  accept  it,  the  whips  to  which  the  ortho- 
dox objected  as  swung  by  Channing  would  have  been 
scorpions  in  the  hands  of  his  less  cautious  friend. 
The  letter  as  written  was  not,  perhaps,  a  model  of 
sweetness  or  amenity,  but  then  the  provocation  was 
immense.  And  what  it  set  out  to  do,  it  did  most 
royally.  There  was  a  deep  personal  note  in  Chan- 
ning's repudiation  of  the  attempt  to  identify  Boston 
liberalism  with  English  Unitarianism.  Martineau, 
in  his  noble  article  on  Channing  (  "  Essays,  Re- 
views, and  Addresses,"  i.  81),  contends  that  Chan- 
ning was  closer  kin  to  Hopkins  and  Edwards  than 
to  Belsham  and  Priestley.  There  was  little  to 
choose  on  the  point  of  moral  freedom,  but  the 
materialism  of  Belsham  and  Priestley  was  to  Chan- 
ning an  intolerable  offence.  There  were  various 
particulars  in  which  his  thoughts  were  not  their 
thoughts,  nor  his  ways  their  ways.  For  one  thing 
Belsham,  as  shown  by  his  own  words  in  the  Morse 
pamphlet,  was  frankly  Universalist,  and  Channing 
had  not  yet  come  into  so  large  a  place.  But  few  of 
the  liberals  had  done  so,  and  many  more  of  them 
were  Arians,  with  Channing,  in  their  doctrine  of 


132  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Christ's  nature,  rather  than  Socinians,  with  Priest- 
ley, Belsham,  and  Lindsey.  It  is  difficult  to  imag- 
ine how  it  could  seem  right  to  Morse  and  Evarts  to 
affix  the  English  stigma  generally  to  their  Unita- 
rian brethren.  In  England  only  the  Socinian  Uni- 
tarians were  called  Unitarians ;  those  of  the  Arian 
type  were  called  simply  Arian  s.  Here  was  a  good 
reason  for  American  hesitation  as  to  accepting  the 
proffered  brand.  The  liberals  accounted  them- 
selves Christians  and  Congregationalists,  and  here 
were  names  enough.  While  differing  from  Bel- 
sham  in  almost  every  particular  of  his  creed,  Chan- 
ning  did  not  wish  to  be  considered  as  casting  the 
least  reproach  on  him  or  others  who,  in  England 
or  America,  believed  in  the  simple  humanity  of 
Christ.  "  Whilst  I  differ  from  them  in  opinion,  I 
have  no  disposition  to  deny  to  them  the  name  and 
privileges  of  Christians."  In  this  part  of  Chan- 
ning's  letter  there  was  a  too  nervous  anxiety  lest 
his  views  should  be  confounded  with  those  of  Bel- 
sham,  and  an  exaggerated  estimate  of  their  differ- 
ence. But  Channing  had  not  yet  come  to  the  full 
breadth  of  his  religious  sympathy,  and  one  is  apt 
to  dent  his  controversial  sword  in  the  very  act  of 
grinding  it. 

The  second  part  was  of  much  more  importance. 
This  was  in  rebuttal  of  the  charge  of  base,  cowardly, 
and  hypocritical  concealment  of  their  opinions  by 
liberal  Christians.  The  concealment  he  did  not 
deny,  but  rather  conceded  to  a  degree  not  justified 
perfectly  by  the  facts  at  our  command. 


THE   DIVIDED   FOLD  133 

But,  in  following  this  course,  we  are  not  conscious 
of  having  contracted,  in  the  least  degree,  the  guilt  of 
insincerity.  We  have  aimed  at  making  no  false  impres- 
sion. We  have  only  followed  a  general  system,  which 
we  are  persuaded  to  be  best  for  our  people  and  for  the 
cause  of  Christianity,  —  the  system  of  excluding  contro- 
versy as  much  as  possible  from  our  pulpits. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  he  had  never  as- 
sailed in  the  pulpit,  nor  the  doctrines  of  total 
depravity  and  election,  "  the  most  injurious  errors 
which  ever  darkened  the  Christian  world,"  the 
exposing  of  which  would  delight  any  congregation, 
a  fact  showing  how  little  fear  had  to  do  with  the 
reticence.  He  and  his  friends  could,  had  they 
wished,  have  made  the  word  Calvinist  a  byword 
and  a  hissing,  but  they  had  never  uttered  the 
name  in  the  pulpit.  As  "  the  most  unintelligible 
doctrine  about  which  Christians  had  ever  dis- 
puted," the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  had  not  seemed 
a  fit  one  for  popular  discussion.  It  was  much  the 
same  with  the  nature  of  Christ.  The  best  men 
were  divided  on  this  point ;  whence  modesty  with 
regard  to  it  was  becoming,  and  scanty  speech. 

No  aspect  of  the  Unitarian  Controversy  has  been 
more  dwelt  upon  than  this  of  the  "  silent  brother- 
hood." Was  the  concealment,  as  Morse  and  Evarts 
charged,  base,  cowardly,  and  hypocritical,  or  was 
it,  as  Channing  insisted,  noble,  generous,  self-deny- 
ing ?  It  was  the  latter  for  the  most  part,  but  not 
altogether.^    Caution  and  prudence  had  their  place 

1  See  W.  C.  Gannett's  Ezra  Stiles  Gannett,  pp.  50,  51,  at  which 
Dr.  Dewey  (private  letter)  demurred,  as  conceding  too  much  to 
the  charge  of  prudential  motives. 


134  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

and  influence  here  and  there.  That  Channing's 
motives  were  precisely  what  he  represented  them 
as  being,  there  cannot  be  a  moment's  doubt,  and 
in  this  respect  he  spoke  in  order  that  the  thoughts 
of  many  hearts  might  be  revealed.  It  was  of  the 
very  essence  of  the  liberal  movement  to  emphasize 
the  ethical  and  spiritual,  and  treat  theological 
dogmas  as  negligible  quantities.  It  was  its  peculiar 
joy  to  preach  a  positive  religion,  and  especially  to 
exhibit  "  the  simplicity  of  the  gospel "  in  prefer- 
ence to  its  obscurer  traits.  Moreover,  the  peace 
and  unity  of  the  Congregational  body  were  very 
dear  to  liberals.  There  will  be  less  and  less  ques- 
tion of  their  high  sincerity  in  proportion  as  the 
facts  are  understood,  while  there  may  be  persistent 
difference  as  to  the  wisdom  of  their  course.  That 
a  bolder  method  would  have  been  fatal  to  their 
cause  seems  not  so  sure  as  Morse  and  Evarts 
thought.  But  for  the  orthodox  reaction,  the  whole 
body  of  New  England  churches  would  have  become 
liberal  before  Channing's  death.  Yet  might  not 
a  bolder  method  have  arrived  more  speedily  at  the 
same  result  ? 

It  was  when  Channing  came  to  the  third  part 
of  his  letter,  —  his  depreciation  of  the  exclusive 
policy,  —  that  he  put  forth  all  his  strength.  "  For 
myself,"  he  said,  "  the  universe  would  not  tempt 
me  to  bear  a  part  in  this  work  of  dividing  Christ's 
church  and  of  denouncing  his  followers.  If  there 
be  an  act  which,  above  all  others,  is  a  transgression 
of  Christian  law,  it  is  this."     Seldom  at  any  time 


THE  DIVIDED   FOLD  135 

have  the  vaticinations  of  prophetic  souls  been  real- 
ized more  obviously  or  more  painfully  than  were 
Channing's  when  he  raised  the  veil  on  the  long 
train  of  irritations,  hatreds,  recriminations  that 
would  ensue  upon  the  adoption  of  the  exclusive 
policy.  Fearing  nothing  for  himself,  he  feared 
countless  miseries  for  the  church  of  Christ,  and 
not  least  for  "  the  very  Christians  who  denounce 
us,  who  seem  indeed  to  be  united,  now  that  a  com- 
mon enemy  is  to  be  trodden  under  foot,  but  who 
have  sufficient  diversities  of  opinion  among  them- 
selves to  awaken  against  each  other  all  the  fury  of 
intolerance  when  this  shall  have  become  the  temper 
and  habit  of  their  minds."  AU  the  passion  of 
which  Channing's  nature  was  capable  went  out  in 
the  strong  crying  of  this  noble  plea  for  a  ministry 
of  reconciliation. 

I  sometimes  wonder  that  his  plea  did  not  pre- 
vail. But  Dr.  Morse  did  not.  He  was  not  reckon- 
ing without  his  host  of  strong  allies.  One  of  these 
was  Dr.  Samuel  Worcester,  brother  of  that  Noah 
Worcester  of  the  "  Bible  News  "  and  "  Christian 
Disciple,"  whose  feet  were  shod  with  the  prejDara- 
tion  of  the  gospel  of  peace.  Already  the  divisive 
sword  had  cleft  one  family  asunder.  Samuel  Wor- 
cester had  suffered  for  his  orthodox  belief  —  the 
loss  of  his  Fitchburg  pulpit ;  now  was  his  day  and 
hour.  But  there  was  genuine  surprise  for  Chan- 
ning  in  his  sharp  attack.  He  did  not  expect  this 
noble  Brutus  to  be  striking  with  the  rest.  And  he 
struck  hard,  three  times.     To  his  first  and  second 


136  WILLIAM  ELLERY    CHANNING 

letters  Channing  replied  promptly,  reserving  pre- 
tention for  the  third,  which  ran  out  into  a  technical 
discussion  of  the  Trinity,  for  which  Channing  had 
imperfect  training  and  no  taste.  There  were  joints 
in  his  armor  which  his  opponent  foimd  and  pierced, 
yet  reached  no  vital  part.  Channing  kept  steadily 
in  view  the  great  headlands  of  the  controversy ; 
fidelity  to  Scripture  and  the  fallibility  of  human 
creeds ;  avoidance  of  theological  preaching  with  a 
view  to  spiritual  edification  ;  the  lack  of  cowardly 
concealment  here ;  the  melancholy  promise  of  a 
divided  fold.  Several  of  his  allusions  to  the  Soci- 
nians  as  "  the  lowest  Unitarians  "  could  not  have 
been  much  relished  by  Dr.  Freeman  and  those  like- 
minded.  But  Channing's  last  letter  was  braver 
than  his  first  in  its  demand  for  open  fellowship 
with  these.  He  praised  their  Christian  spirit  and 
their  Christian  Hfe  :  — 

Such  men  we  have  not  dared  to  exclude  from  the 
Christian  Church,  on  the  ground  of  what  seems  to  us 
great  errors,  any  more  than  to  exclude  the  disciples  of 
Calvin,  whose  errors  we  also  deeply  lament,  but  whose 
errors  are  often  concealed  from  us  by  the  brightness  of 
their  Christian  virtues. 

Touching  the  Trinity,  he  went  nigh  to  the  dis- 
covery of  a  late  orthodox  scholar  ^  that,  for  all  their 
differences  as  to  whether  "  the  blessed  three  "  were 
three  substances,  or  three  somewhats  (Stuart's 
word),  or  three  persons,  so  called  for  want  of  a 

^  Professor  Levi  Leonard  Paine,  Evolution  of  Trinitarian  Doc- 
trine. 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  137 

better  name,  no  one  of  them  was  strictly  orthodox 
according  to  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Nicene  creed. 

And  ought  [he  asked]  phrases  Uke  these  —  of  which 
we  find  not  a  trace  in  the  Bible,  which  cannot  be  defined 
by  those  who  employ  them,  which  convey  to  common 
minds  no  more  meaning  than  the  words  of  an  unknown 
tongue,  and  which  present  to  the  learned  only  flitting 
shadows  of  thought  instead  of  clear  and  steady  concep- 
tions, —  to  separate  those  who  ^are  united  in  the  great 
principles  which  I  have  stated  ?  ^ 

What  follows  reads  very  much  as  if  it  were  an 
extract  from  William  Channing  Gannett's  recent 
sermon  on  "  Reconciliation  in  Religion,"  and  is  far 
more  apt  to  present  conditions  than  to  those  of 
seventy-five  years  since. 

Trinitarians,  indeed,  are  apt  to  suppose  themselves 
at  an  immeasurable  distance  from  Unitarians.  The 
reason,  I  think,  is  that  they  are  surrounded  with  a  mist 
of  obscure  phraseology.  Were  this  mist  dispersed,  I 
beheve  that  they  would  be  surprised  at  discovering  their 
proximity  to  the  Unitarians,  and  would  learn  that  they 
had  been  wasting  their  hostility  on  a  band  of  friends 
and  brothers. 

So,  too,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  Unitarians 
could  pierce  the  mist  and  know  what  the  orthodox 
are  trying  to  enunciate,  they  might  sometimes  say, 
"  We  also  believe  that.'*  And  there  is  the  barest 
possibility,  of  course,  that  sometimes  the  Unitari- 
ans are  a  little  mystified  themselves. 

^  "  God's  infinite  perfection,"  "  salvation  through  Jesus  Christ," 
"  the  same  great  principles  of  duty  "  which  he  taught,  and  "  the 
same  exalted  view  of  human  perfection." 


138  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

If  Channing  withdrew  from  the  initiatory  con- 
test, leaving  with  his  opponent  that  confidence  of 
victory  which  generally  pertains  to  the  last  word, 
it  was  only  that  he  might  continue  the  work  he 
had  begun  on  longer  lines  and  in  a  more  effective 
way.  He  never  made  himself  cheap ;  he  knew  how 
to  reserve  his  fire ;  large  solid  shot  were  much 
more  to  his  mind  than  smaller,  scattering  stuff. 
These  fighting  metaphors  seem  strangely  out  of 
keeping  with  his  peacefid  disposition,  but,  as  one 
of  our  own  poets  has  written,  — 

When  once  their  slumbering'  passions  burn, 
The  peaceful  are  the  strong. 

The  passions  that  rather  glowed  than  flamed  in 
the  few  great  things  which  Channing  contributed 
to  the  controversy  were  for  the  unbroken  fellow- 
ship, and,  that  soon  declaring  itself  impossible,  for 
the  clearest  possible  enunciation  of  the  principles 
and  doctrines  of  the  liberal  movement.  We  have 
the  principles  in  an  article  considering  "  The  Sys- 
tem of  Exclusion  and  Denunciation  in  Religion  " 
(1815).  It  is  much  less  elaborate  than  the  more 
classical  treatment  of  the  same  subject  a  few  years 
later  by  James  Walker,  but,  because  simpler,  not, 
I  think,  less  effective.  The  contention  was  that 
the  honor  of  religion  would  never  suffer  by  admit- 
ting to  Christian  fellowship  men  of  irreproachable 
character.  What  good  had  the  exclusive  spirit 
done  ?  "  Could  the  thunders  and  lightnings  of 
excommunication  have  corrected  the  atmosphere 
of  the  church,  not  one   pestilential  vapor  would 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  139 

have  loaded  it  for  ages.  The  air  of  Paradise 
would  not  have  been  more  pure."  ..."  Bearing 
testimony  to  the  truth  "  by  branding  men  as  here- 
tics and  denouncing  on  them  the  pains  of  hell, 
with  a  view  to  preventing  candid  inquiry,  was  a 
very  doubtful  business.  "  Persecution  has  given 
up  its  halter  and  fagot,  but  it  breathes  venom 
from  its  lips,  and  secretly  blasts  what  it  cannot 
openly  destroy."  There  is  a  reminiscence  of  Shake- 
speare, but  no  quotation,  when  he  says,  "  Now  for 
myself,  I  am  as  willing  that  my  adversary  should 
take  my  purse  or  my  life  as  that  he  should  rob  me 
of  my  reputation,  of  the  affection  of  my  friends, 
and  of  my  means  of  doing  good."  Nothing  is 
more  characteristic  of  Channing's  controversial 
tone  than  its  lofty  self-respect,  its  proud  resent- 
ment of  all  imputations  cast  on  his  own  character 
or  that  of  his  friends.  They  were  insulted,  he  de- 
clared, by  the  concession  of  their  honesty.  The 
exclusive  system  was  wholly  subversive  of  free  in- 
quiry into  the  Scriptures.  What  is  the  use  of 
sending  men  to  the  Scriptures  and  telling  them 
that  unless  they  find  in  them  what  they  do  not 
contain  they  will  be  cut  off  from  the  church  on 
earth  and  that  above  ?  This  system  was  hostile 
to  "  the  great  principles  of  Congregationalism." 
Resort  was  to  be  had  to  "  ecclesiastical  coukts  " 
(Channing  seldom  resorted  to  such  typographical 
devices  to  deepen  his  impression),  "  the  most  de- 
grading form  of  vassalage,  palsying  the  mind  and 
imposing  on  it  the  dreams    and   fictions  of  men 


140  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

for  the  everlasting  truth  of  God."  In  conckision 
there  was  a  more  elaborate  prophecy  than  in  the 
last  letter  to  Worcester  of  the  miserable  divisions 
that  would  ensue  on  the  success  of  the  exclusive 
system.  Beginning  with  the  convention  of  Con- 
gregational ministers  of  Massachusetts,  he  ran  the 
line  of  cleavage  down  through  all  the  smaller 
aggregations  until  it  reached  the  family  and  there 
separated  wives  and  husbands,  parents  and  chil- 
dren, by  an  impassable  gulf. 

In  1819  and  1820  two  articles  in  the  "  Christian 
Disciple,"  "  Objections  to  Unitarian  Christianity 
Considered  "  and  "The  Moral  Argument  against 
Calvinism,"  were  significant  and  weighty  contri- 
butions to  the  progress  of  events.  They  marked 
the  fading  hope  of  any  ministry  of  reconciliation 
that  would  heal  the  widening  breach.  It  may  not 
be  amiss  to  quote  from  the  "  Moral  Argument  " 
Channing's  description  of  Calvinism,  seeing  that 
in  our  own  time  it  has  faUen  into  such  disrespect 
and  desuetude  that  its  features  are  well-nigh  for- 
gotten. Even  then  there  were  attempts  to  soften 
them  and  coax  a  smile  onto  the  hard-set  hps,  but 
it  is  certain  that  Channing  did  not  exaggerate 
"  the  most  authentic  records  of  the  doctrine  "  or 
its  popular  appreciation. 

Calvinism  teaches  that,  in  consequence  of  Adam's 
sin  in  eating  the  forbidden  fruit,  God  brings  into  life 
all  his  posterity  with  a  nature  wholly  corrupt,  so  that 
they  are  utterly  indisposed,  disabled,  and  made  opposite 
to  all  that  is  spiritually  good,  and  wholly  inclined  to  all 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  141 

evil,  and  that  continually.  It  teaches  that  all  mankind, 
having  fallen  in  Adam,  are  under  God's  wrath  and 
curse,  and  so  made  liable  to  all  miseries  in  this  life,  to 
death  itself,  and  to  the  pains  of  hell  forever.  It  teaches 
that,  from  this  ruined  race,  God,  out  of  his  mere  good 
pleasure,  has  elected  a  certain  number  to  be  saved  by- 
Christ,  not  induced  to  this  choice  by  any  foresight  of 
their  faith  or  good  works,  but  wholly  by  his  free  grace 
and  love ;  and  that,  having  thus  predestinated  them  to 
eternal  life,  he  renews  and  sanctifies  them  by  his  al- 
mighty and  special  agency,  and  brings  them  into  a  state 
of  grace,  from  which  they  cannot  fall  and  perish.  It 
teaches  that  the  rest  of  mankind  he  is  pleased  to  pass 
over,  and  to  ordain  them  to  dishonor  and  wrath  for 
their  sins,  to  the  honor  of  his  justice  and  power ;  in 
other  words,  he  leaves  the  rest  to  the  corruption  in 
which  they  were  born,  withholds  the  grace  which  is  ne- 
cessary to  their  recovery,  and  condemns  them  to  "  most 
grievous  torments  in  soul  and  body  without  intermission 
in  hell-fire  forever." 

"  How  can  it  be  possible,"  he  asked,  "  that  men 
can  hold  these  doctrines  and  yet  maintain  God's 
goodness  and  equity  ?  "  Here  he  was  met  by  the 
rejoinder  that  we  cannot  understand  the  mysteries 
of  God.  To  this  there  was  an  elaborate  reply,  a 
justification  of  man's  use,  in  judging  God,  of  the 
moral  reason  God  had  given  him.  What  good,  he 
asked,  in  the  divine  perfections,  if  they  are  con- 
sistent with  the  Calvinistic  representation  ?  To 
the  question,  Calvinism  rejected,  what  becomes 
of  Christianity,  he  answered,  "  Christianity  con- 
tains no  such  doctrines.  Christianity  was  designed 
to  manifest  God  in  a  character  of  perfect  benevo- 
lence." 


142  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Now  is  it  probable  that  a  religion,  having  this  object, 
gives  views  of  the  Supreme  Being  .  .  .  which  if  made 
our  pattern  would  convert  us  into  monsters  ?  It  is  plain 
that  were  a  human  parent  to  form  himself  on  the  uni- 
versal Father,  as  described  by  Calvinism,  that  is,  were 
he  to  bring  his  children  into  life  totally  depraved,  and 
then  to  pursue  them  with  endless  punishment,  we  should 
charge  him  with  a  cruelty  not  surpassed  in  the  annals 
of  the  world ;  or  were  a  sovereign  to  incapacitate  his 
subjects  in  any  way  whatever  for  obeying  his  laws,  and 
then  to  torture  them  in  dungeons  of  perpetual  woe,  we 
should  say  that  history  records  no  darker  crime. 

In  the  "  Objections  to  Unitarian  Christianity 
Considered,"  there  was  the  unconscious  tendency 
to  make  the  Unitarian  statement  of  "  the  divinity 
of  Jesus  Christ "  as  strong  as  possible  consistently 
with  the  denial  of  his  identity  with  God. 

We  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  was  the  most  glorious 
display,  expression,  and  representative  of  God  to  man- 
kind, so  that  in  seeing  him  we  see  and  know  the  invisi- 
ble Father ;  so  that,  when  Christ  came,  God  visited  the 
world  and  dwelt  among  men  more  conspicuously  than 
at  any  other  period. 

To  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  that  sin,  as  against 
an  infinite  being,  is  infinite  sin,  and  requires  infi- 
nite atonement,  he  said,  "  Not  even  a  whisper  of 
this  doctrine  comes  to  us  from  the  Scriptures," 
and  he  denied  the  metaphysics  of  it  altogether. 
Where,  then,  our  hope  ?  "In  the  boundless  and 
almighty  goodness  of  our  Father  ;  in  God's  un- 
changeable mercy,  not  Christ's  infinity."  Next  he 
came  to  the  more  terrible  charge  that  Unitarians 


THE   DIVIDED  FOLD  143 

were  "preaching  morality."  If  by  morality  was 
meant  merely  the  outward  decencies  of  life,  the 
charge  was  false.  If  it  meant  inward  purity,  heav- 
enly-mindedness,  love  of  Jesus  Christ  and  God, 
then  it  was  true,  and  grandly  so,  "  all  the  doc- 
trines, precepts,  threatenings,  and  promises  of  the 
Gospel  having  been  revealed  for  no  other  end 
than  to  make  men  moral  in  this  true  and  generous 
sense." 

The  next  charge  he  attended  to  was  a  lack  of 
zeal,  and  here  spoke  the  Channing  whose  in- 
heritance on  one  line  had  been  from  Mayhew's 
strenuous  opposition  to  the  Whitefield  revival,  the 
Channing  for  whom  the  words  enthusiasm  and 
fanaticism  meant  much  the  same. 

We  dread  a  showy  religion.  We  are  disgusted  with 
pretensions  to  superior  sanctity,  that  stale  and  vulgar 
way  of  building  up  a  sect.  .  .  .  We  think  it  no  part  of 
piety  to  publish  its  fervors,  but  prefer  a  delicacy  in  re- 
gard to  these  secrets  of  the  soul ;  and  hence,  to  those 
persons  who  think  religion  ought  to  be  worn  conspicu- 
ously and  spoken  of  passionately,  we  may  seem  cold  and 
dead,  when,  perhaps,  were  the  heart  uncovered,  it  might 
be  seen  to  be  "  alive  to  God  "  as  truly  as  their  own.^ 

1  The  article  concluded  with  a  rebuttal  of  the  charge  that  Uni- 
tarianism  was  "  a  half-way  house  to  infidelity."  He  cited  Locke 
and  Newton  and  Clarke  and  Lardner  as  eminent  defenders  of 
Christianity  against  "  infidels,"  i.  e.,  the  deists  and  freethinkers  of 
their  time,  whose  ideas  are  now  well  domesticated  not  only  in 
the  Unitarian  households  but  in  the  orthodox.  Worcester  had 
challenged  his  claim  to  Dr.  Clarke,  but  no  one  would  dispute 
it  now.  Coming  to  Priestley,  Channing  at  first  balked  a  little 
and  then  took  a  good,  wide  leap :  "  Whatever  we  may  think  of 


144  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

But  all  that  was  stated  in  these  articles  and  in 
the  controversial  letters,  scantily  and  imperfectly, 
was  embraced  more  fully  and  more  carefully  in 
the  famous  "  Baltimore  Sermon,"  preached  at  the 
ordination  of  the  Rev.  Jared  Sparks  in  1819.  Mr. 
Sparks  is  better  "  named  and  known  by  that  hour's 
feat"  than  by  his  subsequent  historical  writing 
and  presidency  of  Harvard  College.  The  sermon 
is  agreed  to  have  been  the  strongest  ever  preached 
by  Channing  on  distinctly  Unitarian  lines,  his 
most  important  contribution  to  the  Unitarian  Con- 
troversy, and  to  the  definite  integration  of  the 
Unitarian  body.  It  is  an  interesting  paradox  that 
this  devout  anti-sectarian,  who  could,  with  Lessing, 
"  hate  Truth  itself  if  it  should  make  a  sect,"  was 
more  instrumental  than  any  other  in  the  insj^ira^ 
tion  of  that  courage  which  finally  braced  itself  to 
answer  the  exclusionists,  "  If  you  loill  have  it  so,  so 
be  it."  The  Baltimore  society  had  been  organized 
on  distinctly  Unitarian  lines,  and  it  had  built  unto 
itself  a  church,  than  which  there  was  not  at  that 
time  a  more  beautiful  and  imposing  one  in  the 
United  States.  Lately  it  has  been  improved  in 
its  acoustic  properties  and  much  enriched  in  deco- 
rative effect.  I  have  stood  (reverently,  I  trust)  in 
the  pulpit  from  which  Channing  preached.  It  is 
not  unlike  a  mortar  in  its  shape,  and  it  is,  hence, 
suggestive  of  the  projectile  which  went  soaring  out 

some  of  his  opinions,  we  believe  that  none  of  his  opposers  ever 
questioned  the  importance  of  his  vindications  of  our  common 
faith." 


THE  DIVIDED  FOLD  145 

of  it  that  May  morning  to  scatter  consternation 
far  and  wide.  Channing  did  not  stint  his  space 
that  day ;  the  sermon  ^  contains  some  14,000 
words,  and  as  delivered  by  Channing  must  have 
consumed  nearly  or  quite  two  hours.  It  is  too 
easily  accessible  to  require  any  extended  descrip- 
tion or  summary.  The  plan  was  very  simple: 
first  to  set  forth  the  principles  adopted  by  Unita- 
rians in  interpreting  the  Scriptures,  and  then  some 
of  the  doctrines  which  the  Scriptures,  properly 
interpreted,  seemed  clearly  to  express.  The  main 
principle  of  scriptural  interpretation  was  a  strong 
one  from  the  general  view-point  of  the  time,  to 
which  the  Bible  was  one  book,  from  Genesis  to 
Kevelation  a  consistent  whole,  which,  whenever 
not  appearing  to  agree  with  itself,  must  be  made 
to  do  so.  How  ?  Simply,  said  Channing,  by  in- 
terpreting the  obscurer  by  the  clearer  and  more 
dominant  parts.  It  is  easy  to  observe  that  this 
method  has  not  an  inch  of  standing-room  in  our 
later  critical  thought.     But  in  1819  the  unity  of 

1  The  original  MS.  is  my  very  own,  having  been  given  to  me 
by  Dr.  Channing's  granddaughter,  Grace  Ellery  Channing-Stetson, 
Nov.   27,    1901.     It   differs  from  the   printed  form  somewhat.  C/^ 

There  could  not  be  a  greater  contrast  than  between  the  smooth  >  / 
and  limpid  flow  of  the  printed  page  and  the  brokenness  and  ^  ^^t^  ft^^ 
mending  of  the  manuscript,  the  writing  unconscionably  bad,  the 
erasures  and  interlineations  numberless.  It  is  hard  to  conceive 
how  Channing  could  preach  with  that  even  stream  which  was 
habitual  with  him  from  such  a  manuscript.  I  think  his  hand- 
writing worse  than  Theodore  Parker's,  because,  while  Parker 
finished  every  word  after  a  fashion,  Channing,  generally  begin- 
ning well,  often  ran  out  into  a  formlessness  that  was  dreadfully 
obscure. 


^ 


146  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

the  Bible  was  common  ground  to  orthodox  and  lib- 
eral, and  Channing's  method  was  that  of  the  most 
obvious  wisdom  and  the  plainest  common  sense. 
Incidentally  there  was  a  noble  defence  of  reason 
against  those  who  treated  it  with  contempt. 

Passing  to  the  second  part  of  his  discourse, 
Channing  dealt  first  with  the  unreasonableness 
of  the  Trinitarian  dogma,  its  perplexity  for  the 
understanding,  its  confusion  for  the  pious  heart, 
and,  second,  with  the  unity  of  Christ's  nature  as 
opposed  to  the  doctrine  of  his  double  nature.  At 
this  point  the  argument  was  very  clear  and  strong. 
A  few  Scripture  texts  were  cited  in  support  of 
both  God's  unity  and  Christ's,  but  the  argument 
was  mainly  an  appeal  to  men's  rational  natures. 
It  was  always  so  with  Channing,  and  especially  in 
his  maturer  years.  There  was  the  stated  reliance 
upon  Scripture,  but  this  was  the  least  dust  of  the 
balance  in  comparison  with  the  rational  argument. 
His  next  point  was  the  moral  perfection  of  God, 
the  oneness  of  his  justice  and  his  mercy,  his 
parental  character,  his  freedom  from  those  traits 
which  constituted  him  "  a  being  whom  we  cannot 
love  if  we  would,  and  whom  we  ought  not  to  if  we 
could."  He  struck  hard  at  the  distinction  of 
natural  and  moral  inability^  declaring  it  to  be  a 
distinction  without  a  difference,  both  equally  dis- 
honorable to  God  and  man,  absolving  the  latter 
from  aU  guilt  and  laying  it  at  the  door  of  heaven. 
Coming  to  the  Atonement,  he  confessed  a  differ- 
ence among  Unitarians  as  to  "the  precise  influ- 


THE  DIVIDED   FOLD  147 

ence  of  Christ's  death  on  our  forgiveness,"  adding 
that  many  were  dissatisfied  with  the  idea  of  its 
being  a  purely  moral  influence,  —  clearly  his  own 
feeling,  this.  But  there  was  no  wavering  as  to  the 
rejection  of  the  idea  that  Christ's  suffering  was  a 
price  to  God  to  buy  his  mercy  to  mankind.  In 
conclusion  the  preacher  gave  the  Unitarian  view  of 
Christian  virtue.  He  recurred  to  his  distrust  of 
spasmodic  enthusiasm.  The  love  of  God  and 
Christ  were  pictured  in  a  deep,  heart-moving  way 
as  virtue's  top  and  crown.  Nor  did  the  sermon 
end  without  some  drastic  treatment  of  those  who 
elevated  their  human  creeds  above  the  oracles  of 
God,  and  made  them  standards  of  the  character  of 
those  who  were  seeking  with  all  diligence  to  con- 
form their  lives  to  the  pattern  which  they  had  seen 
in  the  mount  of  Christ's  transcendent  holiness. 

Strangely  enough,  in  this  sermon  there  was 
no  special  stress  upon  Channing's  "  one  sublime 
idea,"  as  he  called  it,  the  dignity  of  human  nature, 
the  greatness  of  the  human  soul.  Weighed  in 
the  scales  of  an  ethical  and  spiritual  judgment, 
there  are  among  his  sermons  some  that  outweigh 
this.  Channing  was  never  at  his  best  when  in  his 
controversial  vein.  Nevertheless,  the  Baltimore 
sermon  is  fully  equal  to  its  fame.  What  it  set  out 
to  do,  it  did  right  gloriously.  Various  editions 
straightway  appeared,  and  its  circulation  was  not 
exceeded  by  any  American  publication  until  in 
1830  Webster  made  his  memorable  reply  to 
Hayne.    The  echoes  rolled  through  all  the  country 


148  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

from  the  Alleghanies  to  the  sea.  We  hear  of  men 
far  down  in  Maine  —  which  was  a  part  of  Massa- 
chusetts then  —  reading  it  and  saying,  "  We  must 
organize  a  Unitarian  church,"  and  doing  it  with 
joyful  heart.  We  have  heard  Andrews  Norton 
saying  that  to  hear  Buckminster  was  "  like  walking 
in  the  triumphal  procession  of  Truth."  Those  who 
heard  the  Baltimore  sermon  must  have  had  that 
feeling  in  full  strength.  Some  of  us  have  it  when 
we  read  the  sermon  now,  though  it  was  written 
more  than  eighty  years  ago. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THINGS   NEW  AND   OLD 

It  is  no  part  of  my  intended  scheme  to  write  a 
history  of  the  Unitarian  Controversy  in  its  various 
expression  during  the  fifteen  to  twenty  years  that 
corresponded  with  its  liveliest  ebullition.  A  much 
bigger  book  than  this  has  been  written  on  that  sub- 
ject and  still  left  the  most  untold.  I  should  have 
little  space  for  Channing  if  I  wrote  of  that  with 
an  ungrudging  hand.  And  it  is  not  as  if  his  part 
in  it  was  conspicuous,  measured  by  the  amount  of 
his  spoken  or  written  contribution  to  the  course 
of  the  debate.  Rather  it  was  conspicuously  smaU. 
The  items  already  mentioned  go  nigh  to  exhaust 
the  list  of  his  controversial  sermons  and  articles. 
A  more  significant  fact  is  that,  with  a  few  notable 
additions,  they  do  completely  exhaust  the  contro- 
versial product  of  his  mind.  Some  half  dozen 
sermons  and  articles  after  the  letters  of  1815,  in- 
cluding those  already  named,  are  printed  in  his 
collected  works,  and  William  Henry  Channing 
assures  us  that  there  was  nothing  more  to  print : 
a  careful  examination  of  his  manuscripts  brought 
nothing  more  to  light  of  a  distinctly  controversial 
character.     But  this  note  must  not  be  pressed  too 


150  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

far.  Not  to  strike  often,  but  to  strike  hard  was 
Channing's  policy.  While  he  was  musing  the  fire 
burned,  and  when  he  spoke  again  it  was  with  the 
strength  he  had  been  slowly  gathering,  and  had  not 
wasted  in  a  multitude  of  effortless  effusions  having 
too  much  in  common  with  the  average  stock  in 
controversial  trade.  And  then,  too,  it  should  be 
remembered  that  much  of  his  preaching  that  was 
not  definitely  controversial  held  a  good  deal  of 
controversial  matter  in  solution.  No  names  were 
called,  no  doctrines  specified,  but  there  was  the 
criticism  of  the  rejected  system  by  a  larger  view, 
as,  when  Michael  Angelo  would  question  Raphael's 
conception,  he  projected  his  own  bolder  thought 
upon  the  wall  and  quietly  withdrew,  leaving  the  less 
confronted  by  the  gTeater  thing. 

If  a  detailed  history  of  the  controversy  is  im- 
possible, a  few  of  its  more  striking  incidents  are 
necessary  to  our  apprehension  of  the  general  pro- 
gress of  events.  One  of  these  was  John  Lowell's 
pamphlet,  "  Are  you  a  Christian  or  a  Calvinist  ?  " 
which  came  close  upon  the  heels  of  the  Channing- 
Worcester  letters.  It  took  an  aggressive,  where 
Channing's  had  been  a  defensive  line.  It  was  a 
sharp,  but  not  an  unprovoked  attack.  It  was  a 
rejoinder  to  the  question  which  had  been  stealth- 
ily set  going,  "  Are  you  of  the  Boston  or  of  the 
Christian  religion  ? "  and  it  was  as  effective  as 
Huxley's  retort  on  Fitz-James  Stephen's  account  of 
Positivism  as  "  Romanism  minus  Christianity ;  " 
viz.,  that  Stephen's  doctrine  was  "  Calvinism  minus 


THINGS  NEW  AND   OLD  151 

Christianity."  Lowell  was  a  lawyer  who  preferred 
preaching  to  practice,  taking  for  his  pulpit  a  news- 
paper or  a  pamphlet,  as  the  occasion  led.  He  was 
a  brother  of  the  Rev.  Charles  Lowell,  and  uncle  to 
the  poet,  and  to  that  John  Lowell,  Jr.,  whose  monu- 
ment is  the  Lowell  Institute.  After  the  death  of 
Fisher  Ames  he  was  the  leading  Boston  publicist 
and  political  authority.  For  twenty  years  he  was 
the  most  active  spirit  in  the  affairs  of  Harvard 
College,  and  his  first  business  in  his  pamphlet  was 
to  vindicate  the  University  from  the  aspersions  of 
Jedidiah  Morse.  The  history  of  intolerance  was 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  situation  in  an  effective 
manner,  and  every  departure  from  pure  Congrega- 
tionalism in  the  direction  of  association  or  conso- 
ciation was  challenged  in  such  terms  as  left  no  one 
in  doubt  as  to  what  the  writer  meant  and  where  he 
stood.  It  seems  to  be  a  fair  construction  that  the 
liberal  party  was  much  heartened  by  these  trumpet 
tones.  Channing's  Baltimore  sermon  was  a  sign  of 
this,  and,  blown  through  silver,  had  a  more  rich  but 
not  less  penetrating  note  than  Mr.  Lowell's  bronze. 
It  brought  on  the  two  most  significant  sub-contro- 
versies of  the  time,  two  battles  of  the  giants,  —  one 
especially,  that  of  Professor  Stuart,  of  Andover, 
with  Mr.^  Andrews  Norton.  The  controversy  car- 
ried on  by  Professors  Woods  and  Ware  (the 
*'  Wood'n  Ware  Controversy  "  of  the  irreverent) 

1  He  preferred  the  coefficient  "  Mr."  to  "  Rev."  or  "  Prof.,"  and 
his  preference  was  generally  respected  by  his  contemporaries,  a 
peculiar  distinction  thus  attaching  to  the  simpler  form. 


152  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

was  of  less  marked  ability.  It  must  be  confessed 
that  Professor  Woods,  the  Andover  founder,  had 
a  more  disagreeable  task  to  perform  than  his  col- 
league. Professor  Stuart.  It  was  to  defend  the 
doctrines  of  total  depravity,  vicarious  atonement 
(reconciliation  of  God  to  man),  election,  and  repro- 
bation. It  was  not  denied  that  these  were  ugly 
"  facts,"  but  they  were  facts  the  Bible  proved 
conclusively  (to  Dr.  Woods),  and  from  the  Bible 
there  was  no  appeal.  As  against  Professor  Ware 
("  the  elder  Ware,"  father  of  Henry  Ware,  Jr.)  he 
had,  perhaps,  the  best  of  the  argument  in  his  meta- 
physics of  necessity,  and  he  had  easily  the  best  of 
it  in  his  appeal  to  St.  Paul,  as  if  he  were  the 
whole  Bible,  Jesus  included.  But  Ware  was  much 
the  stronger  in  his  insistence  that  the  necessarian 
doctrine,  as  by  Woods  conceived,  made  morality 
impossible.^  Shifting  from  the  old  Calvinistic 
ground  to  the  Hopkinsian,  Woods  argued  for  a 
"  natural  depravity,"  which  partly  anticipated  our 
more  recent  recognition  of  the  diversity  of  human 
nature  and  the  infected  grain  of  natural  heredity. 
Ware's  doctrine  of  human  nature  was  too  much 
the  modest  ascription  of  his  own  unspotted  good- 
ness to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  His  ap- 
peal from  the  authority  of  St.  Paul  was  to  certain 
clearer  deliverances  of  Jesus  and  to  men's  rational 
knowledge  of  the  divine  character.     The  comment 

1  See,  in  Professor  William  James's  The  Will  to  Believe,  the 
chapter  on  "  Determinism."  I  know  of  nothing  better  in  the 
range  of  the  discussion  of  this  inexhaustible  dilemma. 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  153 

of  our  later  knowledge  on  this  controversy  is  as 
mixed  as  if  it  were  a  supreme  court  decision.  It 
is  that  Ware's  exegesis  was  as  faulty  in  its  endea- 
vor to  make  Paul  square  with  Jesus  as  Woods's 
was  in  its  endeavor  to  make  Jesus  square  with 
Paul,  but  that  Ware's  procedure  was  the  more 
humane.  It  is,  further,  that  if  Ware's  view  of 
human  nature  was  too  genial,  Woods's  "  depra- 
vity "  was  not  "  total,"  and,  moreover,  was  not  the 
traditional  dogma.  It  is,  finally,  that  Ware's  ap- 
peal from  an  intolerable  God,  whether  Calvin's  or 
St.  Paul's,  was  defective  only  in  being  too  timidly 
pronounced. 

It  must  have  been  a  great  relief  to  Channing 
for  Ware  to  take  the  burden  of  this  controversy 
off  his  hands ;  yet  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the 
good  cause  would  not  have  been  more  advantaged 
by  his  own  defence  of  his  position.  It  cannot, 
however,  be  questioned  that  Mr.  Norton  was  much 
better  qualified  than  Channing  to  cope  with  Stuart 
on  the  Trinitarian  field.  With  a  drier  mind  than 
Stuart,  Norton  was  his  superior  in  critical  know- 
ledge and  acumen  ;  and  "  the  consensus  of  the 
competent,"  as  at  present  organized,  is  extremely 
favorable  to  his  results.  The  gravamen  of  his  con- 
tention was  that  neither  the  Trinity  of  three  per- 
sons in  one  God  nor  the  double  nature  of  Christ 
had  New  Testament  warrant.  Our  latest  criti- 
cism, that  is  not  hopelessly  unscientific,  tends  to 
this  conclusion,  taking  the  New  Testament  texts  at 
their  face  value,  while,  if  the  critic  seeks  the  fact 


154  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

of  which  the  text  is  a  distorted  shadow,  Gilbert  in 
America,  Harnack  in  Germany,  finds  the  actual 
Jesus  a  much  more  simply  human  being  than  the 
Jesus  of  the  Arian,  or  even  the  Socinian,  Unita- 
rian. In  the  course  of  the  discussion,  Stuart's 
Trinity,  for  greater  safety,  took  on  a  Sabellian  form, 
his  three  "  persons  "  becoming  three  "  somewhats," 
a  conception  hardly  more  soundly  orthodox  than 
the  Arian  or  Socinian  heresy.^  The  scholarship 
of  the  controversy  reached  to  its  top  and  crown  in 
Mr.  Norton's  tract.  Yet,  in  the  year  of  its  appear- 
ance, Channing,  a  member  of  the  Corporation, 
objected  to  Mr.  Norton's  being  made  Dexter  Pro- 
fessor of  Biblical  Criticism  in  Harvard  College, 
because  of  his  Socinian  or  too  boldly  critical  opin- 
ions. Was  this  after  Norton  had  brought  to  him  and 
to  the  cause  those  splendid  gifts  ?  It  seems  impos- 
sible, but  in  the  freedom  of  his  biblical  criticism, 
Norton  was  then  much  in  advance  of  Channing, 
and  if  Channing  was  anywhere  intellectually  timid 
or  capable  of  prejudice,  it  was  where  Socinianism 
was  involved,  as  we  shall  have  further  reason  to 
observe. 

^  Mr.  Norton's  Statement  of  Reasons  for  not  Believing  the  Doc- 
trines of  the  Trinitarians  was  first  published  in  the  Christian  Dis- 
ciple, 1819,  and  the  same  year  in  pamphlet  form.  Not  until  1833 
did  it  take  the  form  of  the  more  familiar  and  elaborate  book 
with  the  same  title.  The  reason  given  for  the  republication  in 
the  preface  was  that  the  Trinitarian  doctrine  was  breeding  infi- 
delity. That  preface  is  as  full  of  the  stuff  that  went  to  the 
making  of  Mr.  Norton's  Latest  Form  of  Infidelity,  ia  1839,  reply- 
ing to  Emerson's  Divinity  School  Address  of  the  previous  year,  as 
an  egg  is  full  of  meat. 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  165 

Into  a  situation  already  overcharged  with  ele- 
ments of  danger  and  distress,  was  projected,  in 
1820,  the  famous  "Dedham  decision"  of  the  su- 
preme court.  The  Dedham  parish  had  settled 
Alvan  Lamson  two  years  before,  a  good  man  who, 
for  more  than  forty  years,  went  in  and  out  among 
his  people  as  a  faithful  pastor  and  preacher,  while 
yet  so  studious  withal  that  Theodore  Parker  hailed 
him  as  one  of  three  or  four  of  the  good  scholars 
left.  Channing  was  one  of  the  ordaining  council. 
Very  soon  the  majority  of  the  church  members 
became  dissatisfied  with  Mr.  Lamson's  Unitarian 
preaching,  a  majority  of  the  parish  being  more 
than  pleased  with  it.  The  decision  of  the  supreme 
court  left  the  majority  in  possession  of  the  church 
name,  records,  and  even  the  comnmnion  plate. 
The  decision  was  that  "  when  the  majority  of  the 
members  of  a  Congregational  church  shall  sepa- 
rate from  the  majority  of  the  parish,  the  members 
[of  the  church]  who  remain  shall  constitute  the 
church  in  such  parish  and  retain  the  rights  and 
property  belonging  thereto."  No  other  circum- 
stance did  so  much  as  this  to  embitter  the  relations 
of  the  conservatives  and  liberals.  Nor  can  we 
wonder  at  its  operation.  It  seemed  to  reverse  all 
the  traditions  of  the  New  England  churches,  and, 
where  these  had  so  long  subordinated  the  secular 
powers,  to  subject  them  to  their  use  and  sway. 
However  technically  just,  the  decision  could  not 
appear  so  to  the  suffering  minorities.  It  is  per- 
mitted us  to  believe  that  its  asperity  was  tempered 


156  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHAINING 

in  some  cases  by  the  kindness  of  those  occupying 
the  seats  of  the  mighty,  though  oftener  rigidly  en- 
forced. The  bad  blood  of  the  martyrs  became  the 
seed  of  many  "  second  "  churches,  until  in  Mas- 
sachusetts more  than  a  hundred  schisms  marked 
the  extent  of  liberal  declension  from  the  ancient 
standards  and  the  reactionary  zeal.  In  the  mean- 
time, new  Unitarian  societies  were  organized  in 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  Washington,  and  other 
towns. 

The  leaves  that  strewed  the  brooks  of  Vallom- 
brosa  were  hardly  thicker  than  the  printed  ser- 
mons, letters,  pamphlets,  articles  in  periodicals, 
that  we  find  lying  scattered  or  in  heaps  along  the 
years  from  1820  to  1830;  and  once  or  twice  after 
the  latter  date  there  was  an  angry  whirl.  For  us  the 
most  of  them  are  quite  as  dead  as  are  the  fallen 
leaves,  but  some  of  them  just  tingled  with  vitality 
when  they  were  put  forth  by  faithful  witnesses  to 
the  truth  as  apprehended  in  the  new  or  older  way. 
It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  as  Channing  had  in 
1815,  and  again  in  1819,  furnished  occasion  for 
the  intensest  controversial  heat,  so  he  did  again  in 
1826,  and  yet  again  in  1830,  and  that,  as  the  first 
gun  was  his,  so  the  last  rumbling  echoes  were  the 
resonance  of  certain  of  the  most  characteristic  ex- 
pressions of  his  thought  and  spirit.  I  speak  now 
of  his  Election  Sermon  of  1830,  and  of  the  preface 
to  his  first  published  volume,  "  Discourses,  Reviews, 
and  Miscellanies,"  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the 
other,  of  the  retort  which  these  evoked  from  Stuart, 


THINGS  NEW  AND   OLD  157 

of  Andover,  followed  by  Bernard  Whitman's  coun- 
terblast and  "  Cheever's  Vituperations." 

It  was  such  aspects  of  the  controversy  as  those 
furnished  by  Whitman  and  Cheever  that  sickened 
Channing's  heart.  When  his  own  side  showed 
savage  teeth  or  failed  in  Christian  charity,  he 
mourned  with  deeper  grief  than  when  his  oppo- 
nents were  at  fault,  because  hberal  Christianity 
was  the  immediate  jewel  of  his  soul ;  and  by  lib- 
eral Christianity  he  meant,  not  a  Christianity  -^ 
which  put  a  liberal  interpretation  on  the  creed,  but 
a  Christianity  which  is  liberal,  kindly,  gentle,  and 
considerate  in  its  judgment  of  those  differing  from 
ourselves.  But  it  is  time  we  were  considering 
some  of  the  later  aspects  of  the  controversy  which 
reflected  the  image  of  Channing's  thought  and 
personality  in  a  special  manner. 

Though  Channing  once  described  himself  (much 
further  on)  as  "  little  of  a  Unitarian,"  —  to  what 
end  we  shall  see  hereafter,  —  he  probably  did  as 
much  as  any  one  to  stamp  the  new  departure  with 
its  Unitarian  name.  Mr.  Andrews  Norton  gives 
him  the  credit,  or  the  blame,  of  being  the  first 
among  the  liberals  to  name  himself  and  those  in 
substantial  agreement  with  him.  Unitarians.  With 
him  and  others  there  was,  however,  some  wavering 
at  first ;  a  general  preference  for  the  term  "  lib- 
eral" or  "liberal  Christian,"  yet  with  hesitation, 
lest  this  might  prove  the  assumption  of  a  virtue 
where  they  had  it  not.  But  already,  in  the  Bal- 
timore  sermon,   Channing   wears    the   Unitarian 


158  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

name  as  frankly  as  great  generals  wear  the  decora- 
tions on  their  breasts. 

In  1818  the  Federal  Street  society  built  a 
chapel,  or  vestry,  on  Berry  Street,  in  the  rear,  if 
I  should  not  say  "  by  the  side,"  of  its  meeting- 
house ;  and  that  Channing  might  better  economize 
its  convenience  ^  he  instituted  the  Berry  Street 
Conference,  which  flourishes  unto  this  day,  though 
the  place  of  its  early  meetings  knows  them  no 
more.  The  conference  met  for  the  first  time  in 
1820,  and  Channing  made  the  opening  address. 
It  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  his  principal  contri- 
butions to  the  treasury  of  controversial  opinion, 
pure  gold  where  much  of  baser  metal  was  thrown 
in.  The  institution  of  the  conference  was  another 
sign  of  the  process  of  segregation  that  was  now 
rapidly  going  on.  It  was  to  be  "  confined  to  those 
who  harmonize  generally  in  opinion,"  but  not  sim- 
ply with  a  view  to  extending  their  peculiar  views ; 
rather  as  "  having  for  its  object  the  general  dif- 
fusion of  practical  religion  and  of  the  spirit  of 
Christianity^     The  question  he  proposed  for  the 

^  Which  was  meant  to  serve  the  uses  of  a  Sunday-school,  now 
first  begun,  the  catechism  of  young  people,  a  charity  school, 
women's  meetings  for  the  study  of  the  Bible  with  the  minister  — 
a  beautiful  feature  of  Dr.  Channing's  work  to  which  Elizabeth 
Peabody  has  furnished  copious  illustration.  Still  another  use  of 
the  vestry  was  for  a  parish  library,  one  of  many  in  the  churches 
of  that  period,  owing  much,  perhaps,  to  Channing's  inspiration. 
This  was,  I  think,  very  direct  in  Marblehead,  where  Parson  Bart- 
lett  was  much  shaped  by  Channing's  moulding  hand,  and  where 
the  admirable  collection  of  books  in  the  "  Teachers'  Library " 
was  one  of  the  happiest  fortunes  of  my  later  boyhood  and  my 
eaxly  youth. 


THINGS  NEW  AND   OLD  159 

first  discussion  was,  "  How  far  is  Reason  to  he  „ 
^ised  in  explaining  Revelation  ?  "  Once  more  he 
insisted  that  the  Scriptures  reveal  God's  unity 
and  fatherhood  "with  noontide  brightness,"  and 
that  this  revelation  agrees  perfectly  with  the  teach- 
inofs  of  nature  and  the  sure  dictates  of  our  ra- 
tional  and  moral  faculties. 

Passages  of  Scripture  which,  taken  separately,  might 
give  different  ideas  of  God's  nature  and  government, 
are,  in  common  candor  to  the  sacred  writers,  to  be  con- 
strued in  consistency  with  these  fundamental  truths.  .  .  . 
Before  such  an  interpretation,  the  doctrines  of  Trinity, 
of  Infinite  Satisfaction,  of  Election,  of  Irresistible 
Grace,  and  Sudden  Conversion,  fly  as  the  shades  of 
night  before  the  sun.  .  .  .  Let  an  irrational  Protes- 
tantism be  exclusively  propagated,  so  that  the  intelli- 
gent will  be  called  to  make  their  election  between  this 
and  infidelity,  and  [Norton's  contention  also]  the  result 
can  hardly  be  doubted.  The  progressive  influence  of 
Christianity  depends  mainly  on  the  fact  that  it  is  a 
rational  religion  ;  by  which  I  mean  not  that  it  is  such  a 
system  as  reason  could  discover  without  revelation,  stiU 
less  that  it  is  a  cold  and  lifeless  scheme  of  philosophical 
doctrines,  but  that  it  is  a  religion  which  agrees  with 
itself,  with  our  moral  nature,  with  our  experience  and 
observation,  with  the  order  of  the  universe,  and  the 
manifest  attributes  of  God. 

The  time  would  come  when  the  supremacy  of 
Reason  and  the  coordinate  subordination  of  Reve- 
lation, already  implicit  in  Channing's  thought, 
would  be  clearly  announced.  Did  he  not  believe 
that  the  liberal  system  was  better  fitted  than  the 


160  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

orthodox  to  make  good  men  and  assure  social 
progress,  he  would  say,  "  Let  us  at  once  lay  down 
the  weapons  of  controversy."  But  while  never 
inferring  evil  character  from  erroneous  opinions  in 
particular  cases,  he  hastened  to  insist  that  "  it  is 
the  practical  influence  of  liberal  views,  the  baneful 
tendency  of  orthodox  views,  that  summons  us  to 
the  zealous  advocacy  of  rational  and  consistent 
Christianity." 

The  Dudleian  ^  Lecture  of  1821,  though  per- 
haps the  best,  as  it  is  the  most  elaborate,  ex- 
pression of  Channing's  theory  of  a  supernatural 
Christianity,  does  not  fall  within  the  limits  of  his 
controversial  work,  and  for  the  next  great  incident 
of  this  we  must  skip  five  eventful  years,  and  com- 
ing to  1826,  address  ourselves  to  the  considera- 
tion of  his  most  famous  (the  orthodox  of  that  day 
said  "  most  infamous  ")  sermon  after  that  preached 
in  Baltimore.  The  event  it  signalized  was  the  dedi- 
cation of  the  Second  Unitarian  Church  in  New 
York,  that  in  which  Dr.  Dewey  at  fii'st  preached 
his  living  word.^  The  subject  was,  "  Unitarian 
Christianity  most  favorable  to  Piety."  I  have 
imagined  that  the  best  part  of  the  sermon  is  the 
introduction,  with  its  philosophical  account  of  the 
reason  why  men's  opinions  do  not  determine  their 
characters.  In  this  kind  of  writing  Channing  was 
always  at  his  best. 

^  Young  Waldo  Emerson's  great  admiration  of  it  was  for  "  the 
highest  species  of  reasoning  upon  divine  subjects;"  "the  fruit 
of  a  sort  of  moral  imagination." 

^  It  stood  at  the  corner  of  Prince  and  Mercer  streets.  The 
dedication  sermon  was  preached  December  7. 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  161 

Nothing  is  more  common  than  to  see  a  doctrine  be- 
lieved without  swaying  the  will.  Its  efficacy  depends, 
not  on  the  assent  of  the  intellect,  but  on  the  place  which 
it  occupies  in  the  thoughts,  on  the  distinction  and  vivid- 
ness with  which  it  is  conceived,  on  its  association  with 
our  common  ideas,  on  its  frequency  of  recurrence,  and 
on  its  command  of  the  attention,  without  which  it  has 
no  life.  ...  A  creed  is  one  thing  as  written  in  a  book, 
and  another  as  it  exists  in  the  minds  of  its  advocates. 
In  the  book  all  the  doctrines  appear  in  equally  strong 
and  legible  lines.  In  the  mind  many  are  faintly  traced 
and  seldom  recurred  to,  whilst  others  are  inscribed  as 
with  sunbeams  and  are  the  chosen,  constant  lights  of 
the  soul. 

Having  disclaimed  all  intention  of  measuring 
individual  character  by  opinion,  the  preacher  went 
on  to  give  nine  separate  reasons  for  the  justice 
of  his  contention  that  Unitarian  Christianity  was 
most  favorable  to  piety.  They  were  (1)  that  it 
presents  one  Object  of  supreme  homage,  and  does 
not  distract  the  mind  with  three  persons  having 
distinct  qualities  and  relations ;  (2)  that  it  holds 
inviolate  the  spirituaKty  of  God,  not  giving  him 
a  material  human  frame ;  (3)  that  its  object  of 
devotion  is  as  simple  as  it  is  sublime  (this  a 
favorite  note)  ;  (4)  that  it  asserts  the  absolute 
and  unbounded  perfection  of  God's  character ;  (5) 
that  it  accords  with  nature,  with  the  world  around 
and  within  us ;  (6)  that  it  introduces  us  to  new 
and  ever  larger  views  of  God ;  (7)  that  it  assigns 
to  Jesus  his  highest  proper  place  —  that  of  the 
greatest  of  the  sons  of  God ;  (8)  that  it  meets  the 


162  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

wants  of  sinful  men;  (9) — the  climax  is  signifi- 
cant —  that  it  is  a  rational  religion.  Under  each 
of  these  heads  the  higher  was  contrasted  with  the 
lower  view.  Under  the  fifth  head  we  have  an 
example  of  his  most  incisive  manner.  He  was 
often  less  vivid  and  more  colorless. 

Nature  is  no  Trinitarian.  It  gives  not  a  hint,  not 
a  glimpse  of  a  tri-personal  author.  Trinitarianism  is  a 
confined  system,  shut  up  in  a  few  texts,  a  few  written 
lines,  where  many  of  the  wisest  minds  have  failed  to 
discover  it.  It  is  not  inscribed  on  the  heavens  and 
earth,  not  borne  on  every  wind,  not  resounding  and  re- 
echoing through  the  universe.  The  sun  and  stars  say 
nothing  of  a  God  of  three  persons.  They  all  speak  of 
the  One  Father  whom  we  adore.  To  our  ears  one  and 
the  same  voice  comes  from  God's  word  and  works,  a  full 
and  swelling  strain,  growing  clearer,  louder,  more  thrill- 
ing as  we  listen,  and  with  one  blessed  influence  lifting 
up  our  souls  to  the  Almighty  Father. 

The  most  elaborate  section  was  the  eighth.  This 
was  for  the  most  part  a  criticism  of  the  "  infinite 
substitute "  doctrine  of  the  atonement.  In  due 
course  came  the  passage  which  represented  this 
doctrine  as  saying,  in  effect,  that  "  God  had  erected 
a  gallows  in  the  centre  of  the  universe  and  had 
publicly  executed  upon  it,  in  room  of  the  offenders, 
an  Infinite  Being,  the  partaker  of  his  own  Supreme 
Divinity."  The  passage  was  introduced  with  a 
profuse  apology.  The  preacher  warned  his  hearers 
that  he  was  going  to  say  something  dreadful.  He 
anticipated  the  severest  reprobation,  and  his  antici- 


THINGS  NEW  AND   OLD  163 

pation  was  made  good.  Nothing  else  in  the  whole 
scope  of  his  utterance  gave  so  much  offence.  One 
cannot  easily  imagine  why.  The  stone  of  stum- 
bling and  the  rock  of  offence  was  that  word  "  gal- 
lows," as  if  "  the  shame  of  the  cross  "  were  not 
that  crucifixion  was,  as  Channing  said,  "  a  punish- 
ment more  ignominious  and  agonizing  than  the 
gallows,  a  punishment  reserved  for  slaves  and 
the  vilest  malefactors."  He  made  large  allowance 
for  the  possible  idealization  of  the  doctrine  by  "  the 
love,  the  disinterestedness,  the  moral  grandeur  and 
beauty  of  the  sufferer,"  whereby  "  the  cross  is  made 
a  source  of  peace,  gratitude,  love,  and  hope."  This 
part  was  clean  forgotten,  and  the  outcry  was  im- 
mense. But  I  have  found  no  proof  that  Channing 
ever  regretted  the  plainness  of  his  illustration. 

The  Election  Sermon  of  1830,  which,  together 
with  his  nearly  simultaneous  preface  to  his  first 
volume  of  sermons  and  articles,  was  his  last  great 
affront  to  the  New  England  orthodoxy,  was  one  of 
the  most  eloquent  of  aU  his  sermons  and  addresses. 
By  spiritual  freedom  he  intended  the  "  moral 
energy  of  holy  purpose  put  forth  against  the  senses, 
against  the  passions,  against  the  world,  thus  liberat- 
ing the  intellect,  conscience,  and  will,"  to  the  end 
that  they  may  act  powerfully  and  efficiently.  He 
did  not  fight  as  one  who  beat  the  air :  "  We  are 
in  the  midst  of  influences  which  menace  the  intel- 
lect and  heart;  and  to  be  free  is  to  withstand  and 
conquer  these."  Not  content  with  his  first  meagre 
definition,  he  burst  into  a  splendid  series  of  expan- 


164  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

sive  characterizations,  eacli  beginning,  "  I  caU  that 
mind  free."  We  all  know  the  nephew's  *'  Sym- 
phony," that  beautiful  expression  of  the  ideal 
conduct  of  life.  The  uncle's  characterization  of 
spiritual  freedom  is  his  Oratorio.  Hardly  can  I 
deny  myself  the  quotation  of  its  every  part.  Never 
was  Channing  more  autobiographical  than  here. 
The  exigency  of  the  grand  enumeration  gives  us  at 
once  the  mark  of  his  high  calling  and  that  to  which 
he  actually  attained.  Where  all  is  so  profoundly 
characteristic,  it  is  hard  to  say  which  part  is  most 
so,  but  the  third  paragraph  is  certainly  as  much  so 
as  any. 

I  call  that  mind  free,  which  jealously  guards  its  intel- 
lectual rights  and  powers,  which  calls  no  man  master, 
which  does  not  content  itself  with  a  passive  or  heredi- 
tary faith,  which  opens  itself  to  light  whencesoever  it 
may  come,  which  receives  new  truth  as  an  angel  from 
heaven,  which,  whilst  consulting  others,  inquires  still 
more  of  the  oracle  within  itself  and  uses  instructions 
from  abroad,  not  to  supersede  but  to  exalt  and  quicken 
its  own  energies. 

Throughout  we  have  an  individualism  as  stern 
and  exigent  as  that  of  Emerson's  "  Self -Reliance." 
The  method  is  to  show  that  civil  or  political  lib- 
erty is  of  little  worth  except  as  it  springs  from, 
expresses,  and  invigorates  spiritual  freedom.  The 
influence  exerted  by  religion  is  first  exhibited,  then 
that  exerted  by  government.  There  are  points 
made  under  the  second  head  that  are  as  sharp  to- 
day as  then,  and  as  much  needed  to  force  us  back 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  165 

on  our   reserves   o£   political   idealism.     Now,  as 

then,  — 

We  need  to  learn  that  the  forms  of  liberty  are  not  its 
essence ;  that,  whilst  the  letter  of  a  free  constitution  is 
preserved,  its  spirit  may  be  lost;  that  even  its  wisest 
provisions  and  most  guarded  powers  may  be  made 
weapons  of  tyranny.  In  a  country  called  free,  a  major- 
ity may  become  a  faction  and  a  proscribed  minority  may 
be  insulted,  robbed,  oppressed.  Under  elective  govern- 
ments a  dominant  party  may  become  as  truly  a  usurper, 
and  as  treasonably  conspire  against  the  state  as  an  in- 
dividual who  forces  his  way  by  arms  to  the  throne. 

If  he  had  ever  caught  the  infection  of  the  notion 
that  an  ideal  form  of  government  is  the  one  thing 
needful  he  was  by  this  time  completely  cured: 
"  Free  institutions  secure  rights  only  when  secured 
by,  and  when  invigorating,  that  spiritual  freedom, 
that  moral  power  and  elevation  which  is  the  su- 
preme good  of  our  nature."  Three  years  before  De 
Tocqueville,  he  put  his  finger  on  our  ailing  spot : 
"The  power  of  opinion  grows  into  a  despotism 
which  more  than  all  things  represses  original  and 
free  thoughts,  subverts  individuality  of  character, 
reduces  the  community  to  a  spiritless  monotony, 
and  chills  the  love  of  perfection." 

And  this  despotic  power  of  opinion  was  most 
in  evidence  in  that   conception  of  religion  which 
converts  the  principle  which  should  take  man  out 
of  the  grasp  of  custom  and  fashion  and  refer  him 
to  a  higher  tribunal,  into  the  chief  instrument  of 
usurpation  over  the  soul. 


166  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

Tantum  religio  potuit  suadere  malorum. 

And  the  worst  of  these  evils  were  not  by  any 
means  the  tortures  inflicted  on  men's  shrinking 
flesh,  the  horrors  of  the  dungeon  and  the  faggot 
and  the  wheeL  The  worst  things  were  the  enslave- 
ment and  starvation  and  destruction  of  the  mind. 

I  look  with  a  solemn  joy  on  the  heroic  spirits  who 
have  met  freely  and  fearlessly  pain  and  death  in  the 
cause  of  truth  and  human  rights.  But  there  are  other 
victims  of  intolerance  on  whom  I  look  with  unmixed 
sorrow.  They  are  those,  who,  spell-bound  by  early 
prejudice,  or  by  intimidations  from  the  pulpit  and  the 
press,  dare  not  think  ;  who  anxiously  stifle  every  doubt 
or  misgiving  in  regard  to  their  opinions  as  if  to  doubt 
were  a  crime ;  who  shrink  from  the  seekers  after  truth 
as  from  infection  ;  who  deny  all  virtue  which  does  not 
wear  the  livery  of  its  own  sect ;  who,  surrendering  to 
others  their  best  powers,  receive  unresistingly  a  teaching 
which  wars  against  reason  and  conscience  ;  and  who 
think  it  a  merit  to  impose  on  such  as  live  within  their 
influence  the  grievous  bondage  which  they  bear  them- 
selves. 

It  was  the  application  of  these  considerations  to 
the  state  of  religion  in  and  about  Boston  that 
made  Channing  the  object  of  a  fresh  attack,  of 
which  Stuart,  of  Andover,  was  the  head  and  front. 
Making  the  application,  Channing  said  :  — 

We  say  we  have  no  Inquisition.  But  a  sect  skilfully 
organized,  trained  to  utter  one  cry,  combined  to  cover 
with  reproach  whoever  may  differ  from  themselves,  to 
drown  the  free  expression  of  opinion  by  denunciations 
of  heresy,  and  to  strike  terror  into  the  community  by 


THINGS  NEW  AND   OLD  167 

joint  and  perpetual  menace,  —  such  a  sect  is  as  perilous 
and  palsying  to  the  intellect  as  the  Inquisition.  It 
serves  its  ministers  as  effectually  as  the  sword. 

In  a  pamphlet  of  fifty-two  pages,  Professor  Stuart 
went  about  to  show  that  Channing's  allegations 
were  "  not  true."  In  reply  to  this  came  Bernard 
Whitman's  succession  of  letters,  which  were  to 
Channing's  sermon  very  much  what  Mrs.  Stowe's 
"  Key  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  was  to  her  novel. 
Terrible  was  their  array  of  modern  instances. 
Vigorous  counterblasts  ensued,  some  following 
eagerly  the  lead  of  Parsons  Cooke,  who,  in  1828, 
had  published  "  Unitarianism  an  Exclusive  Sys- 
tem." It  was  not  an  exclusive  system,  but  it  had 
its  exclusive  moments.  In  some  of  the  church 
divisions,  where  it  had  a  giant's  strength,  it  used 
it  like  a  giant.  In  many  individual  cases  a  mere 
change  of  opinion  left  the  old  virus  of  illiberality 
and  ecclesiasticism  working  as  fatally  as  ever. 

The  effect  of  Channing's  sermon  was  intensified 
by  the  almost  simultaneous  appearance  of  his 
"  Discourses,  Reviews,  and  Miscellanies."  No- 
where has  he  given  a  clearer  account  of  his  con- 
troversial attitude  and  spirit  than  in  the  preface 
to  that  book,  and  I  cannot  do  better  than  to 
bring  my  story  of  his  controversial  action  to  an 
end  with  his  own  rendering  of  its  conditions  and 
its  aims. 

It  was  my  lot  to  enter  on  public  life  at  a  time  when 
this  part  of  the  country  was  visited  by  what  I  esteem 
one  of  its  sorest  scourges ;  I  mean  by  a  revival  of  the 


168  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

spirit  of  intolerance  and  persecution.  I  saw  the  com- 
mencement of  those  systematic  efforts,  which  have  since 
been  developed,  for  fastening  on  the  community  a  par- 
ticular creed.  Opinions,  which  I  thought  true  and  puri- 
fying, were  not  only  assailed  as  errors  but  branded  as 
crimes.  Then  began  what  seems  to  me  one  of  the  gross 
immoralities  of  our  times,  the  practice  of  aspersing  the 
characters  of  exemplary  men,  on  the  ground  of  differ- 
ences of  opinion  as  to  the  most  mysterious  articles  of 
faith.  Then  began  those  assaults  on  freedom  of  thought 
and  speech,  which,  had  they  succeeded,  would  have  left  us 
only  the  name  of  religious  liberty.  Then  it  grew  perilous 
to  search  the  Scriptures  for  ourselves,  and  to  speak  freely 
the  convictions  of  our  own  minds.  I  saw  that  penalties, 
as  serious  in  this  country  as  fine  and  imprisonment,  were, 
if  possible,  to  be  attached  to  the  profession  of  liberal 
views  of  Christianity,  the  penalties  of  general  hatred 
and  scorn ;  and  that  a  degrading  uniformity  of  opinion 
was  to  be  imposed  by  the  severest  persecution  which 
the  spirit  of  the  age  would  allow.  At  such  a  period,  I 
dared  not  be  silent.  To  oppose  what  I  deemed  error 
was  to  me  a  secondary  consideration.  My  first  duty,  as 
I  believed,  was  to  maintain  practically  and  resolutely 
the  rights  of  the  human  mind  ;  to  live  and  to  suffer,  if 
to  suffer  were  necessary,  for  that  intellectual  and  reli- 
gious liberty  which  I  prize  incomparably  more  than  any 
civil  rights.  I  felt  myself  called,  not  merely  to  plead  in 
general  for  freedom  of  thought  and  speech,  but,  what 
was  more  important  and  trying,  to  assert  this  freedom 
by  action.  I  should  have  felt  myself  disloyal  to  truth 
and  freedom  had  I  confined  myself  to  vague  common- 
places about  our  rights,  and  forborne  to  bear  my  testi- 
mony expressly  and  specially  to  proscribed  and  perse- 
cuted opinions.  The  times  required  that  a  voice  of 
strength  and  courage  should  be  lifted  up,  and  I  rejoice 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  169 

that  I  was  among  those  by  whom  it  was  uttered  and 
sent  far  and  wide.  The  timid,  sensitive,  diffident,  and 
doubting  needed  this  voice  ;  and,  without  it,  would  have 
been  overborne  by  the  clamor  of  intolerance.  If  in  any 
respect  I  have  rendered  a  service  to  humanity  and  re- 
ligion which  may  deserve  to  be  remembered  when  I  am 
taken  away,  it  is  this.  I  believe  that  had  not  the  spirit 
of  religious  tyranny  been  met,  as  it  was,  in  this  region, 
by  unyielding  opposition,  it  would  have  fastened  an  iron 
yoke  on  the  necks  of  this  people.  The  cause  of  religious 
freedom  owes  its  strength  to  nothing  so  much  as  to  the 
constancy  and  resolution  of  its  friends  in  this  quarter. 
Here  its  chief  battle  has  been  fought,  and  not  fought  in 
vain. 

The  controversial  incidents  of  Channing's  life 
were  set  in  a  large  environment  of  personal,  do- 
mestic, and  social  circumstance.  Great  joys  and 
sorrows  had  qualified  the  main  course  of  his  ex- 
perience with  their  tributary  streams.  In  the 
summer  of  1814  he  had  married  his  cousin  Ruth 
Gibbs,  his  playmate  when  she  was  a  little  girl,  al- 
ready fascinating  him  when  she  was  his  school- 
mate in  Newport  with  dim  portents  of  her  perfect 
charm,  the  woman  whom  he  summoned  to  remake 
the  world  in  the  light  of  Hutcheson's  revelation 
under  the  Cambridge  willows  (but  never  sent  the 
letter),  to  whom  for  a  long  time  he  never  told  his 
love,  because  she  was  so  rich  and  he  so  poor, 
bringing  his  courage  to  the  daring  point  only 
when  her  persistent  refusal  of  all  other  lovers 
made  plain  to  him  that  her  regard  for  him  was 
more    than    cousinly.     Her   mother,  his   father's 


170  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

sister,  had  a  beautiful  home  in  Boston,  spacious 
enough  for  two  families,  and  thither,  soon  after 
his  marriage,  he  went  to  live.  Here  was  good  for- 
tune, for  the  influence  of  Mrs.  Gibbs,  no  less  than 
that  of  her  daughter,  made  for  him  a  domestic  at- 
mosphere that  was  surcharged  with  pleasantness. 
With  lighter  cares,  his  own  mother's  anxious  heart 
had  learned  to  go  more  quietly,  but  the  sharp  sallies 
of  her  wit  had  taken  wider  range.  For  Chan- 
ning  to  lose  these  would  have  been  sad,  and  he  did 
not  altogether,  for  almost  every  well  day  of  his  life 
for  the  next  twenty  years  he  made  her  a  little  visit, 
and  thereby  added  something  to  her  stock  of  cheer 
and  to  his  own.  Almost  simultaneously  with  his 
marriage  began  the  long  summer  vacations  at 
"  Oakland,"  the  Gibbs  country-seat  in  Portsmouth, 
near  Newport,  on  the  island  of  Rhode  Island. 
Channing's  oldest  brother  died  in  1810,  just  after 
the  birth  of  his  son  William  Henry,  whose  life  of 
noble  service  was  not  to  be  complete  without  his 
biography  of  the  greatest  of  the  Channing  line. 
The  year  1815  meant  more  for  Channing  as 
marked  by  the  death  of  his  sister  Ann,  who  had 
married  Washington  Alls  ton,  than  as  marked  by 
the  outbreak  of  the  Unitarian  Controversy.  In 
1816,  as  a  bird  comes  and  goes,  came  his  first 
child,  but  not  as  the  bough,  which  trembles  for  a 
moment  and  then  is  still  again,  was  his  pained  and 
disappointed  heart.  A  second  daughter  was  born 
in  1818,  in  whom  he  and  many  others  were  to 
take  great  satisfaction  and  delight.    The  next  year 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  171 

a  son  was  born  who  died  in  infancy,  and  in  1820 
(February  22)  a  second,  William  Francis,  in  the 
maturity  of  his  powers  inventor  and  sociologist, 
whose  recent  death  (March  19,  1901)  deprived 
me  of  what  would  have  been  an  inestimable  help, 
for  he  was  indifferent  to  no  aspect  of  his  father's 
life,  and  he  admired  him  to  the  bounds  of  adora- 
tion and  beyond. 

The  years  of  interwoven  domestic  happiness  and 
sorrow  did  not  synchronize  with  any  improvement 
of  Channing's  health,  and  the  strain  of  religious 
controversy  must  have  been  injurious  to  it,  sub- 
ject as  he  was  to  nervous  excitement,  lassitude, 
and  depression.  Some  betterment,  apparently, 
after  the  extreme  debility  of  his  early  ministry 
was  subject  in  1820  to  a  lamentable  falling  off, 
and  in  1821  he  made  a  considerable  journey 
through  New  Hampshire,  Vermont,  and  New  York, 
in  the  hope  of  gaining  strength.  The  journey 
brought  him  much  exhilaration  and  delight,  but 
little,  if  any,  physical  advantage.  Remarkably 
sensitive  to  natural  beauty,  both  by  nature  and 
by  the  grace  of  Wordsworth,  his  best  loved  poet, 
he  drank  deep  draughts  of  mountain  gloom  and 
glory,  and  what  he  saw  he  told  with  a  minuteness 
that  anticipated  the  pre-Raphaelites  in  whom  Rus- 
kin  took  such  vast  delight.  At  Oakland  again  in 
September,  he  wrote  of  the  journey  as  "  a  speci- 
men of  the  life  he  had  led  for  many  years."  "  One 
day  undoes  the  work  of  many  weeks."  He  would 
seem  to  have  gained  a  little,  when  some  new  de- 


172  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

rangement  would  take  from  him  his  power  of  body 
and  mind ;  "  then  I  slowly  work  my  way  upwards 
to  fall  as  low  again."  But  he  did  not  account  the 
journey  lost.  As  if  thinking  of  Wordsworth's 
"  Yarrow  Unvisited,"  he  wrote,  "  I  should  hardly 
dare  to  travel  over  the  same  ground  again,  lest  the 
bright  images  which  are  treasured  up  in  memory 
should  be  dimmed  by  a  second  sight." 

In  the  spring  of  1822,  a  year's  absence  was 
granted  him,  and  he  set  out  for  Europe  at  the  end 
of  May.  It  looks  as  if  he  "  took  his  pleasures 
sadly,"  as  Froissart  did  not  say  the  English  do, 
though  he  has  been  quoted  a  thousand  times  to  that 
effect.  What  he  needed  was  the  frank  objectivity 
of  varied  scenes,  and  what  he  imagined  himself 
after  was  indicated  thus  :  — 

A  great  object  in  travelling  is  to  discover  by  compar- 
ison what  is  primary  and  universal  in  our  nature,  to 
separate  the  adventitious,  secondary,  temporary,  to  learn 
the  deep  principles  on  which  all  permanent  improve- 
ments are  to  rest,  to  behold  and  to  love  what  is  humariy 
to  shake  off  our  prejudices  in  favor  of  the  unessential 
modifications  of  our  nature,  and  to  recognize  the  essential 
through  these  modifications. 

But  in  the  event  he  builded  better  than  he 
planned.  Crossing  the  Atlantic,  the  beauty  of  the 
ocean  contended  for  the  mastery  of  his  thoughts 
with  its  scientific  phenomena.  Shelley,  the  most 
meteorological  of  poets,  could  hardly  have  been 
more  sensitive  to  the  atmospheric  conditions,  while 
Professor  Tyndall  could  not  have  brought  to  them 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  173 

much  more  of  scientific  curiosity.  The  English 
and  Swiss  lakes  and  mountains  stirred  in  him  deep 
delight,  but  everything  in  Italy,  where  he  spent 
the  winter  months,  was  seen  as  through  a  mist  of 
tears,  news  having  come  to  him  in  Rome  that  his 
older  boy  was  dead.  That  Mrs.  Channing  was 
with  him  made  his  grief  more  sharp,  for  had  she 
not  left  her  children  to  take  care  of  him  ?  His 
mother  was  still  living  (she  lived  till  1834),  and 
he  wrote  to  her  on  his  forty-third  birthday  from 
Florence,  but  not  a  word  of  the  beautiful  city  or 
its  glorious  memories ;  on  the  contrary,  a  letter  of 
filial  devotion  mingled  with  severe  introspection 
and  regret  for  the  overabundance  of  his  personal 
good  fortune  in  material  things.  Emerson  had  not 
yet  written,  — 

Well  I  know  no  mountain  can 
Measure  with  a  perfect  man ;  ^ 

but  Channing  could  anticipate  the  thought,  and 
even  such  an  imperfect  man  as  Coleridge  was  more 
interesting  to  him  than  Skiddaw  or  Mont  Blanc, 
while  to  meet  Wordsworth  was  for  him  an  experi- 
ence as  impressive  as  for  Emerson  his  later  meet- 
ing with  Carlyle.  Coleridge  recognized  in  him  "  a 
philosopher  in  the  double  sense  of  the  word : " 
"  He  has  the  love  of  wisdom  and  the  wisdom  of 
love."  After  Channing  had  written  his  articles  on 
Napoleon,  a  report  somehow  sprang  up  that  they 

1  Changed,  much   for   the  worse,   by   Emerson,   in   his   later 
editions,  to  — 

Well  I  know  no  mountain  can, 
Zion  or  Meru,  measure  with  man. 


174  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

"  had  their  birthplace  and  received  their  shape  in 
Coleridge's  study."  Channing  could  not  remem- 
ber that  Napoleon  was  so  much  as  named  in  their 
sole  interview.  Moreover,  there  was  little  in  the 
substance  of  the  articles  that  Channing  had  not 
conceived  before  he  went  abroad  and  openly  ex- 
pressed. Coleridge  wrote  Allston,  who  had  intro- 
duced Channing  to  him,  that  he  had  seldom  met  a 
person  so  interesting  in  conversation.  Channing 
was  much  amused,  seeing  that  Coleridge  had  done 
all  the  talking,  and  his  own  part  had  been  that  of 
"  a  passive  bucket."  He  had,  however,  asked  a 
few  questions  which  had  broken  the  dam  of  Cole- 
ridge's pent-up  enthusiasm  for  German  philoso- 
phy and  the  reformation  and  reorganization  of  the 
English  Church.  He  was  not  exactly  "  pumped 
into  for  two  stricken  hours."  He  was  obliged  to 
withstand  an  inundation,  and  he  found  it  more 
exhilarating  than  Carlyle  imagined  the  experience 
could  possibly  be  to  any  mortal.^ 

The  visit  to  Wordsworth  proved  very  satisfac- 
tory. There  was  stuff  in  it  for  another  "  Lyrical 
Ballad."  It  seemed  so  to  Channing,  as  he  was 
jolted  along  with  Wordsworth  in  a  rude  farmer's 
cart,  the  only  vehicle  of  which  Channing  could 
avail  himself  for  the  two  and  a  half  miles  from  the 
inn  at  Grasmere  to  the  poet's  home.  When  he 
set  out  to  return,  "  after  an  interview  of  great 

^  For  his  London  preaching,  which  made  a  profound  impres- 
sion, see  "  Channing  the  Man  "  in  Miss  E.  P.  Channing's  Kindling 

Thoughts. 


THINGS   NEW  AND  OLD  175 

pleasure  and  interest,"  Wordsworth  suggested  that 
they  should  walk  together  until  Channing  was  tired. 
But  Channing's  strength  gave  out  at  the  end  of  the 
first  half  mile,  and  he  invited  Wordsworth  to  share 
his  seat  in  the  cart,  which  straightway  became  a 
chariot  of  the  sun. 

We  talked  so  eagerly  as  often  to  interrupt  one  an- 
other, and  as  I  descended  into  Grasmere  near  sunset, 
with  the  placid  lake  before  me,  and  Wordsworth  talking 
and  reciting  poetry  with  a  poet's  spirit  by  my  side,  I 
felt  that  the  combination  of  circumstances  was  such  as 
my  highest  hopes  could  never  have  anticipated. 

What  Wordsworth  remembered  best  of  the  talk, 
after  the  lapse  of  twenty  years,  was  that  Chan- 
ning's one  great  evidence  of  the  divine  origin  of 
Christianity  was  "  that  it  contained  nothing  which 
rendered  it  unadapted  to  a  progressive  state  of 
society  [sic  Harnack's  "  What  is  Christianity?"], 
that  it  put  no  checks  on  the  activity  of  the  human 
mind,  and  did  not  compel  it  to  tread  always  in  a 
beaten  path." 

So  far  as  Channing's  health  was  concerned,  the 
European  tour  was  disappointing.  He  felt  this  so 
keenly  that,  after  once  preaching  to  his  people  on 
his  return,  he  went  straight  to  Newport  and  wrote 
a  letter  to  the  parish  officers,  calling  their  atten- 
tion to  his  condition  and  requesting  some  action  on 
their  part  that  would  meet  the  needs  of  the  society. 
What  he  wished  for  was  a  colleague,  and  knowing 
this,  or  divining  it,  the  society  hastened  to  vote  that 
one  should  be  secured.    Mr.  Dewey,  whose  promise 


176  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

was  already  tliat  of  a  very  great  preacher,  had  been 
Channing's  assistant  durmg  the  broken  year  preced- 
ing his  European  journey  and  his  substitute  during 
the  year's  absence,  but  he  had  now  gone  to  New  Bed- 
ford. It  was,  however,  in  no  half-hearted  way  that 
the  society  turned  to  young  Ezra  Stiles  Gannett, 
then  twenty-three  years  old,  and  just  through  with 
his  theological  studies.  If  Channing  had  the  saintly 
temper,  Gannett  did  not  have  it  in  a  less  degree. 
Channing,  economizing  his  energy,  that  he  might 
use  it  more  effectively,  could  spare  himself  as  Gan- 
nett never  could  or  did.  That  he  was  a  grandson 
of  that  Ezra  Stiles  whom  the  young  Channing 
had  revered  must  have  been  one  attraction  of  the 
younger  for  the  older  man.  Between  them  there 
was  a  difference  of  gifts,  with  the  same  spirit. 
Channing's  temper  was  the  less  conservative,  the 
more  sympathetic  with  the  bolder  methods  of  re- 
form, and  inclined  him  more  to  say,  "  The  field  is 
the  world."  Gannett  had  more  confidence  than 
Channing  in  denominational  forms  and  instru- 
ments. He  had  one  gift  to  a  degree  that  Channing 
did  not  approximate,  —  that  of  extemporaneous 
preaching.  The  judgment  of  Wendell  Phillips  on 
this  head  should  be  worth  something,  and  he  once 
told  me  that  he  had  never  known  Dr.  Gannett' s 
equal  in  such  preaching,  while  his  casual  utterance 
was  yet  more  remarkable.  He  described  to  me  a 
meeting  —  of  some  Bible  Society,  I  think  —  which 
was  intolerably  dull  and  cold  till  Dr.  Gannett  got 
the  floor,  "  when,"  said  Phillips,  "  he  poured  a  flood 


THINGS  NEW  AND   OLD  177 

of  lava  over  that  sea  of  ice."  Dr.  Gannett's  biogra- 
phy has  been  better  written  than  that  of  any  other 
Unitarian  preacher,  and  for  a  good  account  ^  of  his 
relations  with  Channing  my  readers  must  go  back 
to  that.  The  young  colleague's  position  was  a  very 
trying  one.  The  word  in  his  heart  might  be  like 
a  fire  shut  up  in  his  bones,  but  on  Sunday  morning 
he  must  go  to  church,  not  knowing  whether  he 
would  be  permitted  to  deliver  his  soul,  or,  Chan- 
ning being  well  enough  to  preach,  find  that  he 
must  repress  his  noble  rage.  I  have  sometimes 
wondered  if,  in  these  relations.  Dr.  Channing  did 
not  suffer  from  his  consciousness  of  preeminent 
standing,  and  show  a  lack  of  intelligent  sympathy 
to  which  Dr.  Gannett  would  have  been  superior  in 
a  like  situation. 

Mr.  Gannett  was  ordained  June  30,  1824. 
Ministers  of  every  sect,  "  other  than  those  of 
the  Methodists  "  (!)  were  invited.  Dr.  Channing 
preached  the  sermon  of  which  Henry  Ware,  Jr., 
wrote,  "  I  have  never  seen  the  enthusiasm  equalled. 
To  hear  such  a  sermon  is  one  of  the  memorable 
things  in  a  man's  life,  ...  an  epoch  in  his  ex- 
istence." The  subject  was  "  The  Demands  of  the 
Age  on  the  Ministry."  They  were  for  the  correc- 
tion of  scepticism  and  false  views  of  religion,  and, 
preeminently,  for  its    alliance  with  the  spirit   of 

^  But  apparently  there  was  not  much  to  tell,  and  we  are  obliged 
to  infer  that  the  personal  relation,  if  much  was  expected,  was  a 
disappointing  one.  With  the  older  man  so  reserved,  the  younger 
so  eager  and  so  sensitive,  this  was  bound  to  happen. 


178  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

practical  reform.  Consciously  or  unconsciously  the 
preacher  was  here  sounding  a  note  prelusive  of 
the  character  of  his  own  ministry  henceforth  to  a 
progressively  pronounced  degree.^ 

Meantime  the  aggregation  of  the  Unitarian 
churches  into  a  distinct  denomination  was  being 
every  year  more  perfectly  assured,  and  had  its  signs 
of  various  importance,  some  of  them  spoken  against 
not  only  by  the  orthodox  critics  but  also  by  the 

^  The  sermon  as  originally  printed  in  pamphlet  form  had  a 
note  upon  Dr.  Priestley  which  gave  great  offence  to  Priestley's 
English  friends.     Mr.  Belsham  replied  to  it  sharply  and  effec- 
tively in  the  Monthly  Repository,  xix.  (1824),  678-681.     At  one 
point  he  was  amusing,  —  where,  speaking  of  Channing's  view  of 
the  doctrine  of  necessity  as  having  a  chilling  influence,  he  cited 
Jonathan  Edwards  to  the  contrary  and  said,    "If   any  persons 
think  that  Mr.  Edwards  was  a  chilling  writer,  let  them  read  what 
he  has  written  on  the  eternity  of  hell-torments."     In  1838  Har- 
riet Martineau  followed  up  Belsham's  criticism  of  Channing  in 
the  chapter  on  Priestley  in  her  Betrospect  of  Western  Travel,  i. 
109-123.     Few  criticisms  upon  Channing  were  so  well  deserved 
as  this.     It  is  certain  that  he  did  not  appreciate  Priestley's  char- 
acter and  that  he  had  not  qualified  himself  to  speak  of  him  as 
he  did  hy  carefully  attending  to  his  thought  and  life.     What- 
ever he  might  think  of  Priestley's  necessarian  ethics  and  materi- 
alistic philosophy,  for  him  to  write  of  him  as  "  constitutionally 
deficient  in  moral  enthusiasm  and  deep  feeling  "  was  not  to  hit 
even  the  target,  much  less  the  bull's-eye.     In  1831  Lucy  Aikin 
wrote  him  an  illuminating  letter  on  this  subject,  in  reply  to  which 
he  said  that  he  had  "  no  prejudices  or  dislikes  to  overcome,"  and 
went  on  to  give  a  different  impression :  "  I  know  little  of  his 
works,  and  probably  shall  not  read  them,  for  I  have  little  sym- 
pathy with  his  ethical  and  metaphysical  doctrines,  and  seldom 
turn  my  thoughts  to  the  religious  controversies  on  which  he  spent 
so  much  of  his  zeal."   Here  we  have  less  of  Channing's  habitually 
open  mind  than  anywhere  else.     Those  who  like  to  batten  on  the 
faultiness  of  the  great  and  good  should  make  the  most  of  it.  See 
the  Channing- Aikin  Correspondence,  pp.  93,  110. 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  179 

most  liberal.  The  fear  and  dread  of  making  one 
more  sect  were  strong  in  many  liberal  minds ;  in 
Channing's  very  strong,  indeed,  and  yet  he  lent 
himself  more  cordially  than  some  others  to  the 
new  organization  and  the  Unitarian  name.  The 
first  number  of  the  "  Christian  Register  "  was  pub- 
lished April  20, 1821,  the  second  not  until  August 
24,  but  since  then  there  has  been  no  break  in  the 
line  of  its  weekly  publication.  Its  first  editor 
and  publisher  was  Mr.  David  Reed,  who  brought 
to  it  the  enthusiasm  and  the  pertinacity  without 
which  it  would  not  have  survived  the  vicissitudes 
of  its  earlier  and  more  precarious  life.  The  end 
in  view  was  a  more  popular  presentation  of  the 
rational  and  liberal  exposition  of  religion  to  which 
the  "  Christian  Disciple "  gave  a  learned  form, 
and  that  too  infrequently.  In  1824  the  "  Disciple  " 
gave  way  to  the  "  Christian  Examiner,"  which  had 
an  honorable  course  till  1869.  No  one  contributed 
more  to  its  original  standing  and  success  than 
Channing,  with  his  articles  on  Milton,  Fenelon, 
and  Napoleon.  But  a  matter  of  much  more  denom- 
inational importance  and  definitiveness  was  the 
organization  of  the  American  Unitarian  Associa- 
tion in  1825.  Little  knowing  how  good  the  omen, 
the  Berry  Street  Conference  on  May  25,  Emerson's 
birthday,  appointed  a  meeting  for  the  afternoon  of 
that  day,  at  which  it  was  voted  to  form  "  a  new 
society  to  be  caUed  the  American  Unitarian  Asso- 
ciation." It  was  John  Pierpont,  of  heroic  soul,  who 
struck  out  boldly  for  the  Unitarian  name.     There 


180  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

were  those  who  balked  at  it ;  notably  Mr.  Norton, 
who  had  made  the  first  motion  for  a  new  organi- 
zation in  the  Anonymous  Club  in  the  previous 
December.^  In  accordance  with  the  terms  of  that 
motion  there  was  a  meeting  on  January  27,  at 
which  Dr.  Channing  was  present  with  many  others, 
clerical  and  lay,  and  the  discussion,  of  which  David 
Reed  preserved  a  full  account,  was  long  and  gen- 
eral. Dr.  Channing's  line  was  cautious,  if  not 
deterrent,  and  for  some  reason,  although  a  com- 
mittee was  appointed  to  call  another  meeting,  it 
declined  to  act.  Nowhere  is  the  liberal  temper  of 
that  time  disclosed  more  faithfully  than  in  the  min- 
utes of  the  Berry  Street  meeting  of  January  27. 

When  the  association  was  formed,  May  25, 
Channing  was  chosen  president,  but  pleaded  phys- 
ical disability.  He  was  not  a  leader  in  the  new 
organization  except  as  in  all  meetings  in  which  he 
took  part  he  gravitated  naturally  to  the  highest 
place.  "Wherever  MacGregor  sits,  there  is  the 
head  of  the  table."  The  leaders  of  the  new  organ- 
ization were  some  of  the  younger  and  the  youngest 
men :  James  Walker  (31),  Henry  Ware,  Jr.  (31), 
Gannett  (24)  ;  and  the  last  of  these  was  first. 
These  took  the  lead,  and  kept  it,  though  they  drew 
in  mau}^  aiders  and  abettors.    Especially  was  young 

1  At  the  house  of  the  Hon.  Josiah  Quincy.  Quincy  was  one  of 
eight  distinguished  laymen,  —  judges,  mayors,  etc.,  with  a  col- 
lege president,  —  belonging  to  the  Anonymous  Association,  the 
membership  of  which  was  numerically  small.  The  energy  and 
initiative  of  laymen  in  those  days  was  in  remarkable  contrast  with 
their  present  submergence  in  the  clerical  flood. 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  181 

Gannett's  flaming  zeal  conspicuous,  —  to  some 
a  warning,  to  many  guiding  home.  Aaron  Ban- 
croft,^ the  historian's  father,  was  the  first  president 
of  the  association ;  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  was 
one  of  its  first  missionary  preachers.^  It  was  no 
easy  thing  for  Channing  to  keep  the  pace  set  by 
his  eager  and  impulsive  mate.  He  had  his  hesita- 
tions and  reserves  ;  was  surprised  that  the  business 
was  getting  on  so  fast,  but  never  opposed  himself 
to  it,  was  never  in  the  least  unfriendly.  The 
avowed  purpose  of  the  association  —  "  to  diffuse 
the  knowledge  and  promote  the  interests  of  pure 
Christianity  "  —  was  as  simple,  as  untheological, 
as  if  he  had  chosen  the  words.  It  was  not  the 
association  which  affrighted  him  with  visions  of 
"  a  Unitarian  orthodoxy  "  as  he  lay  upon  his  bed. 
After  attending  one  of  its  annual  meetings  he 
wrote  a  friend  delightedly :  there  had  not  been  the 
slightest  savor  of  the  sectarian  spirit.  At  another 
meeting  he  gave  an  elaborate  address,  insisting  on 
the  formation  of  character  as  the  main  purpose  of 
the  organization.  At  a  third,  we  find  him,  strangely 
enough,  though  not  inconsistently,  opposing  the  in- 

1  Minister  at  Worcester,  an  able,  influential  man,  who  antici- 
pated his  son's  predilection  for  history  and  wrote  a  good  life  of 
Washing-ton. 

2  For  many  particulars  see  Christian  Register  for  some  weeks 
following  the  Seventy-Fifth  Anniversary  Meeting  in  1900,  and 
Rev.  George  Willis  Cooke's  article  in  New  England  Magazine 
of  same  year ;  also  an  article  by  Dr.  Samuel  A.  Eliot  in  Christian 
Register,  September  19, 1901,  based  on  researches  of  G.  W.  Cooke  ; 
best  of  all,  G.  W.  Cooke's  "  Unitarianism  in  America,"  which 
comes  to  hand  too  late  for  me  to  profit  by  its  careful  presentation. 


182  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

tersectarian  management  of  the  ministry  to  the 
poor :  only  Unitarians,  as  having  a  right  view  of 
human  nature,  were  qualified  for  such  a  work.  The 
doctrine  of  total  depravity  was  an  impossible  edu- 
cational basis. 

It  was  a  necessity  with  Channing  to  take  a 
large  and  general  view  of  every  matter  in  which 
he  had  a  vital  interest.  We  are  not  then  surprised 
to  find  him  making  a  report  of  the  Unitarian  Asso- 
ciation, together  with  reports  of  certain  Temper- 
ance and  Sabbath  Observance  societies,  the  text 
of  one  of  his  most  elaborate  discussions,  "  Remarks 
on  Associations."  The  same  strong  wind  blows 
through  it  as  through  his  "  Spiritual  Freedom  "  of 
the  following  year.  We  do  not  wonder  at  Em- 
erson's delight  in  Channing  when  we  read  this 
superb  anticipation  of  his  own  "  Self -Reliance." 
We  have  here  as  there  the  conspiracy  of  society 
against  the  individual  set  forth  with  unmistakable 
plainness  of  speech.  The  influence  of  the  good 
may  be  hardly  less  pernicious  than  that  of  the  bad. 
"  There  is  no  moral  worth  in  being  swept  away  by 
a  crowd,  even  towards  the  best  objects."  "  What 
many  of  us  have  to  dread  chiefly  from  society  is, 
not  that  we  shall  acquire  a  positive  character  of 
vice,  but  that  society  will  impose  on  us  a  negative 
character ;  that  we  shall  live  and  die  passive  be- 
ings ;  that  the  creative  and  self -forming  energy  of 
the  soul  will  not  be  called  forth  in  the  work  of  our 
improvement."  "  Could  a  perfect  individual  be 
found,  we  should  injure  ourselves  by  indiscrimi- 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD  183 

nate  and  servile  imitation."  But  the  value  of 
associated  action  was  not  denied.  "  The  value  of 
associations  is  to  be  measured  by  the  energy,  the 
freedom,  the  activity,  the  moral  power  which  they 
encourage  and  diffuse."  It  was  by  this  standard 
that  he  would  judge  the  Unitarian  Association.  In 
so  far  as  it  was  "  fitted  to  call  forth  energy,  active 
talent,  religious  inquiry,  a  free  and  active  virtue," 
it  would  justify  itself  and  deserve  men's  confidence 
and  loyalty.  If  it  illustrated  the  dangers  and  not 
the  possible,  though  difficult,  advantages  of  associ- 
ated action,  it  would  be  a  cumberer  of  the  ground. 


CHAPTER  VII 

LETTERS   AND   POLITICS 

It  has  been  remarked  by  one  of  the  many  who 
have  written  upon  Channing's  intellectual  and 
moral  development  that  he  returned  from  Europe 
a  changed  man  ;  that  henceforth  we  find  him  "  less 
ministerial  and  more  manly,"  as  he  expressly  con- 
gratulated himself  on  being  as  he  drew  near  the 
end  of  his  career,  more  social  in  his  temper  and 
his  aims,  more  robust  or  less  meticulous  in  his 
speech  and  action.  This  writer  has  imagined  the 
European  journey  to  have  furnished  the  line  of 
division  between  the  life  of  the  recluse  and  that 
of  the  social  reformer.  But  such  sharp  divisions, 
though  convenient  and  attractive,  commonly  mis- 
state the  facts.  The  evolution  of  Channing's  life 
was  so  uniformly  from  within  outward,  that  no 
change  of  circumstance  could  seriously  affect  his 
character  except  as  it  afforded  him  an  opportunity 
to  enter  more  deeply  into  the  springs  of  his  own 
thought  and  action.  This  the  European  journey 
did  for  him  in  some  degree,  serving  him  the  good 
turn  the  sojourn  in  Arabia  served  Paul,  and  the 
Wartburg  the  little  Erfurt  monk  ;  making  it  possi- 
ble for  him  to  take  account  of  stock  more  care- 


LETTERS  AND   POLITICS  185 

fully  than  lie  could  do  in  the  discharge  of  his 
regular  professional  dut;ies.  But  for  the  begin- 
nings of  that  change  which  gives  much  the  effect 
of  contrast  to  Channing's  life  after  1825,  as  com- 
pared with  the  twenty  years  preceding,  we  must  go 
back  farther  than  to  the  European  journey.  The 
earliest  beginnings  of  this  change  antedated  the 
Unitarian  Controversy  as  precipitated  in  1815. 
But  that  controversy  brought  to  it  increments  of 
distinct  importance.  It  was  somewhat  with  Chan- 
ning  as  it  was  with  Lowell  and  Whittier.  We 
have  had  regrets  that  they  were  distracted  by  their 
antislavery  ardors  from  the  proper  field  of  their 
activity  —  that  of  the  poet's  art.  But  the  fact  is 
that  their  antislavery  ardors  brought  them  to  them- 
selves and  liberated  their  faculties  for  such  poetical 
expression  as  we  never  should  have  had  from  these 
poets  if  the  antislavery  conflict  had  found  them 
indifferent  and  left  them  cold.  The  natural  oper- 
ation of  a  theological  controversy  is  to  make  men 
narrower.  The  particular  controversy  in  which 
Channing  engaged  had  no  such  effect  on  him.  It 
broadened  him.  It  increased  his  force,  his  freedom 
of  thought  and  utterance ;  it  invigorated  his  style. 
It  fortified  his  self-respect  and  self-assertion. 
Though  a  new  sect  was  developed  by  the  contro- 
versy and  he  joined  himself  to  its  assembly,  he 
was  not  made  sectarian  by  this  experience.  The 
new  sect  was  for  him  what  Dr.  Kirkland  chris- 
tened it,  "the  unsectarian  sect."  And  the  contro- 
versy did  him  a  real  service.    It  went  far  to  break 


186  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

up  the  cloistered  habit  of  his  life,  which  had  been 
aggravated  by  his  thorn,  in  the  flesh,  —  the  recur- 
rence of  his  periods  of  broken  health ;  if  I  should 
not  say  the  acuter  manifestations  of  a  disability 
from  which  he  was  never  wholly  free. 

Careful  investigation  would,  no  doubt,  assure 
us  that  the  later  Channing  was  an  evolution  from 
the  earlier  and  earliest  by  a  graduahsm  which  left 
little  room  for  catastrophic  influences  and  effects. 
It  would  find  Adam  Ferguson's  "  Civil  Society," 
read  in  his  college  days,  and  his  communistic 
dreams  at  Richmond  nourishing  the  germs  of  his 
interest  in  social  problems  and  of  his  conception 
of  Christianity  as  a  means  of  improving  the  life 
that  now  is  and  not  merely  a  promise  of  that  which 
is  to  come.  The  distinction  thrust  upon  him  by 
the  Unitarian  Controversy  ;  the  fame  achieved  and 
the  debate  excited  by  his  Baltimore  sermon  ;  the 
offer  which  came  to  him  of  the  Dexter  professor- 
ship in  Harvard  College,  and  which  he  eagerly  ac- 
cepted, only  to  find  his  health  making  it  impossi- 
ble; the  violence  of  admiration  which  would  have 
robbed  Boston  of  his  ministry  to  enrich  Baltimore 
or  New  York,  —  all  of  these  things  conspired  to 
give  him  a  more  pubhc  character,  and  obliged  him 
to  think  of  himself  as  something  more  than  a  mere 
theological  recluse.  ; 

Simultaneously  there  came  a  noticeable  invigo- 
ration  of  his  thought  and  style.  In  the  "  Moral 
Argument  against  Calvinism"  (1820),  we  find 
him  criticising  a  style  which,  "  intended  to  be  ele- 


LETTERS  AND  POLITICS  187 

gant,  fell  into  jejuneness  and  insipidity.  It  de- 
lighted in  words  and  arrangements  of  words  which 
were  little  soiled  by  common  use,  and  mistook  a 
spruce  neatness  for  grace."  He  fancied  times  had 
changed.  "Men  have  learned  more  to  write  as 
they  speak,  and  are  ashamed  to  dress  up  familiar 
thoughts  as  if  they  were  just  arrived  from  a  far 
country,  and  could  not  appear  in  public  without  a 
foreign  and  studied  attire."  The  comment  is  sug- 
gested that  Channing  could  more  easily  write  as 
he  talked,  because  he  talked  as  he  wrote,  formally 
and  precisely,  with  little  of  the  ease  and  freedom 
that  make  good  conversation.  But  it  was  some- 
thing that  he  cherished  an  ideal  of  homelier  things. 
There  were  those  who  thought  his  sermons  char- 
acterized by  that  "  smooth,  watery  flow  of  words  " 
which  he  deprecated  in  his  contemporaries.  But 
all  things  are  relative,  and  Channing's  sermon- 
style  avoided  at  once  the  barrenness  of  the  Puritan 
inheritance  and  the  floridity  of  the  extreme  revolt. 
It  was  significant  of  his  manlier  taste  that,  while 
hoping  that  the  new  strength  would  not  degenerate 
into  coarseness,  he  thought  "  even  this  would  be  a 
less  evil  than  tameness  and  insipidity." 

fBut  as  yet  we  have  not  touched  what  was  a  prime 
factor  in  the  broadening  of  Channing's  social  con- 
sciousness and  his  relation  to  the  social  questions 
of  his  time  —  his  interest  in  political  affairs,  j  This 
never  had  the  concreteness  of  Theodore  Parker's.  In 
Parker's  letters  we  are  in  a  world  of  persons  and 
personalities ;  we  are  continually  running  up  against 


188  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

this  or  that  individual  who  is  characterized  in  terms 
of  unmistakable  candor.  In  Channing's  letters 
there  is  a  painful  lack  of  personal  elements.  Prin- 
ciples, not  persons,  were  the  main  haunt  and  re- 
gion of  his  mind.  But  the  interest  in  politics  that 
had  been  excited  by  that  nipping  air  which,  as  a 
boy,  he  breathed  with  his  father  and  grandfather 
in  Newport,  that  later  fed  upon  the  passions  which 
the  French  Revolution  excited  in  the  bosoms  of 
American  Federalists  and  Republicans,  never  lost 
its  hold  upon  him.  In  his  first  Boston  years,  as 
earlier,  an  ardent  Federalist,  opposing  the  War  of 
1812  with  something  of  partisan  feeling  mingled 
with  his  humane  detestation,  not  even  his  depress- 
ing health  availed  to  submerge  him  bodily  in  the 
slough  of  that  pessimistic  temper  which  the  Essex 
"  junto  "  cultivated  with  assiduous  and  acrid  zeal. 
More  than  one  aspect  of  the  war  incited  him  to 
public  utterance  in  his  own  pulpit  and  elsewhere. 
This  meant  little  courage,  so  sure  was  he  of  gen- 
eral applause.  There  was  one  grand  exception  to 
the  impersonal  character  of  Channing's  private 
political  writing  and  public  speech.  It  was  that 
of  Napoleon.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century  that 
mighty  apparition  bulked  his  ethical  horizon,  a 
fascinating  and  intolerable  shape.  One  of  his  first 
great  successes  was  his  sermon  on  the  downfall  of 
Napoleon,  delivered  in  King's  Chapel,  June  15, 
1814.  The  Hundred  Days  and  Waterloo  were  yet 
to  come,  but  they  were  not  to  reverse  the  word  of 
doom.     It  was  at  once  a  sign  of  Channing's  promi- 


LETTERS  AND  POLITICS  189 

nence  and  an  immense  enhancement  of  it  that  he 
was  chosen  for  an  occasion  of  such  exalted  pubhc 
interest.  Never  before  or  after  did  Channing  let 
himself  go  as  in  that  passionate  denunciation  of 
Napoleon,  and  in  that  paean  over  what  seemed  to  be 
the  ruinous  end  of  his  career.  When  he  reached 
the  climax  of  his  description,  "  The  oppressor  is 
fallen  and  the  world  is  free,"  there  was  tumultuous 
applause,  a  sound  which  those  sacred  walls  had 
never  echoed  until  then,  and  which  Channing  has- 
tened gently  to  reprove. 

The  aristocratic  temper  of  the  Boston  Feder- 
alists harmonized  well  enough  with  Channing's 
natural  inclination,  but  little  with  his  moral  confi- 
dence in  human  nature ;  and  the  latter  was  bound 
to  gain  upon  the  former  steadily.  Always  in  Chan- 
ning, and  ever  more  pronouncedly,  we  have  the 
aristocratic  inclination,  and  the  intellectual  and 
moral  criticism  upon  it  and  suppression  of  it.  With 
a  constitutional  and  educated  "  aloofness,"  equal 
to  Emerson's,  he  did  his  best  to  force  himself  into 
the  popular  contacts  that  were  proper  to  his  delib- 
erate estimate  of  social  values  and  ideals.  The 
Hartford  Convention  did  more  to  repel  him  than 
to  attract  him  closer  to  the  Federalist  party.  In 
1817,  addressing  a  "  Society  for  the  Education  of 
Indigent  Boys,"  we  find  him  saying  things  that 
must  have  been  the  gall  of  bitterness  to  his  Feder- 
alist friends,  and  have  encouraged  the  gods  of  the 
local  Democracy  to  say,  "  He  has  become  as  one 
of  us." 


190  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Should  the  history  of  the  world  be  traced,  I  believe 
it  would  be  found  that  society  has  derived  a  consider- 
able portion  of  its  best  materials  —  I  mean  superior 
minds  —  from  the  inferior  classes  of  society.  .  .  .  The 
higher  classes  have  a  tendency  to  intellectual  imbecility, 
and  need  to  be  replenished  from  the  lower.  The  looser 
relations  of  the  poor  are  more  favorable  to  native  vigor, 
originality,  freshness  of  thought,  where  real  genius  is 
possessed ;  and,  from  all  this,  it  follows  that  the  intel- 
lectual progress  of  a  community,  its  mental  activity,  its 
energy  of  thought  and  action,  will  be  promoted  by 
extending  to  all  classes  the  means  of  education,  by 
giving  everywhere  to  superior  minds  the  opportunity  of 
emerging  and  of  lending  their  impulse  to  society. 

In  a  social  atmosphere  so  sensitive  as  that  of 
Boston  here  was  offence  enough  to  tag  him  as  a 
Jacobin,  but  we  wonder  less  that  this  tag  was 
affixed  to  him  in  the  thirties,  when,  apart  from  his 
antislavery  affiliations  of  those  years,  we  read  his 
article,  "The  Union,"  which  appeared  in  1829.  It 
begins  with  a  too  generous  defence  of  the  Hartford 
Conventionists  against  the  aspersions  of  John 
Quincy  Adams,^  which  is  a  too  genial  construc- 
tion of  their  purposes  and  spirit,  and  it  ends  with 
a  lofty  tribute  to  George  Cabot,  president  of  the 
Hartford  Convention,  which  is  qualified  with  ex- 

^  See  Henry  Adams's  History  of  the  United  States,  passim,  and 
particularly  vol.  viii.  We  of  the  present  time  know  much  more 
than  Channing  did,  or  could,  of  the  Hartford  Convention,  and  Mr. 
Adams's  History  is  a  sufficient  justification  of  his  grandfather's 
opinions.  Timothy  Pickering  and  John  Lowell  were  violent 
disimionists.  Cabot,  more  absolutely  distrustful  of  democracy, 
was  of  a  less  active  or  more  cautious  disposition. 


LETTERS  AND  POLITICS  191 

pressive  blame.  "  He  wanted  a  just  faith  in  man's 
capacity  for  freedom,  at  least  in  that  degree  of 
it  which  our  institutions  suppose.  .  .  ,  He  had 
too  much  the  wisdom  of  experience.  He  wanted 
what  may  be  called  the  wisdom  of  hope."  In 
these  respects  he  was  a  typical  Federalist.  "  The 
Federalists  as  a  body  wanted  a  just  confidence  in 
our  national  institutions.  They  wanted  that  faith 
which  hopes  against  hope  and  which  freedom 
should  inspire.  Here  was  their  sin,  and  it  brought 
its  penalty.  .  .  .  The  taint  of  anti-republican  ten- 
dencies was  fastened  upon  them  by  their  oppo- 
nents, and  this  reproach  no  party  could  survive." 

When  this  was  first  published  the  differenti- 
ation of  the  Kepublican  (Democratic)  party  of 
that  time  into  National  Republicans  (soon  to  be 
Whigs)  and  Democrats  was  rapidly  going  on.  The 
divisive  questions  were  those  of  a  protective  tariff 
and  internal  improvements.  In  the  "  Union  "  arti- 
cle, Channing  with  aU  possible  frankness  took  the 
Democratic,  anti-Federalist  side.  Granting  that 
such  internal  improvements  as  would  be  benefi- 
cial to  the  whole  country  might  justly  be  fostered 
by  the  general  government,  "but  let  Congress 
propose  narrow  local  improvements,  and  we  need 
no  prophet  to  foretell  the  endless  and  ever-mul- 
tiplying intrigues,  the  selfish  combinations,  the 
jealousies  and  discontents  that  wiU  foUow  by  a 
necessity  as  sure  as  the  laws  of  nature."  It  was 
as  if  he  saw  the  scandals  of  our  successive  river 
and  harbor  bills   passing  before  him,  like   Mac- 


192  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

beth's  vision  of  the  kings  upon  the  witches'  heath. 
To  the  protective  tariff  he  addressed  himself  with 
more  lively  scorn.  As  habitually  convinced  as 
Herbert  Spencer  that  "  that  is  the  best  govern- 
ment which  governs  least,"  he  said,  "  The  crying 
sin  of  all  governments  is  that  they  intermeddle 
injuriously  with  human  affairs,  and  obstruct  the 
processes  of  nature  by  excessive  regulation."  "  The 
promotion  of  free,  unrestricted  commerce  through 
the  world  "  was  a  "  sublime  object  of  philanthropy." 
*'  Tariffs  never  will  be  impartial.  They  wiU  al- 
ways, in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  be  the  result  of 
selfish  combinations  of  private  and  public  men, 
through  which  a  majority  will  be  secured  to  par- 
ticular interests ;  and  such  is  the  blindness  of 
avarice  that  to  grasp  a  short-lived,  partial  good, 
the  infinite  blessings  of  union  will  be  hazarded  and 
thrown  away." 

When  writing  these  things  Channing  had  no 
longer  his  earlier  assurance  of  wide  public  sympa- 
thy. Massachusetts  had  discovered  that  her  inter- 
ests, once  commercial,  were  now  manufacturing; 
protection  was  now  her  god,  and  Daniel  Webster 
was  its  prophet.  The  splendid  anti-protectionist 
of  1824  had  become  the  obsequious  apologist  of 
1828.1  But  even  "  a  tariff  for  revenue  only  "  was 
not  agreeable  to  Channing's  sense  of  justice.  He 
hailed  a  future  when  "  every  custom-house  should 
be  shut  from  Maine  to  Louisiana."     "  The  inter- 

^  See  Henry  Cabot  Lodge's  account  and  criticism  of  Webster's 
action  in  his  Daniel  Webster,  American  Statesmen  Series. 


LETTERS  AND  POLITICS  193 

ests  of  human  nature  require  that  every  fetter 
should  be  broken  from  the  intercourse  of  nations ; 
that  the  most  distant  countries  should  exchange 
their  products  of  manual  or  intellectual  labor  as 
freely  as  the  members  of  the  same  community." 
As  time  went  on,  and  the  Republican  party  of 
those  days  was  definitely  parted  into  Democrats 
and  Whigs,  Channing  held  fast  the  integrity  of 
his  economic  principles  and  sinned  not  with  his 
mouth  or  pen.  He  never  enunciated  them  so 
clearly  as  in  1841,  and  that,  too,  in  Philadelphia, 
of  all  places  in  the  world. 

A  reference  in  the  "  Union  "  article  to  the  postal 
service,  pleading  for  the  use  of  every  cent  of  its 
income  to  cheapen  postal  rates,  is  a  reminder  that 
this  year  (1829)  was  that  of  a  great  discussion  of 
the  Sunday  mail  service.  Channing  at  first  signed 
the  petition  to  abolish  this,  but  the  report  of 
Eeverdy  Johnson  convinced  him  that  he  had  done 
so  on  mistaken  grounds.  He  had  done  so,  not  on 
account  of  the  day's  sacredness,  but  because  he 
thought  the  Sunday  mail  increased  the  burdens  of 
the  postal  clerks.  Mr.  Johnson  convinced  him  to 
the  contrary,  and  also  that  the  prohibition  was 
unconstitutional ;  and  Channing  hastened  to  make 
known  his  changed  opinion,  not  without  indigna- 
tion at  the  unreflecting  carelessness  of  those  gentle- 
men whose  signatures  to  the  petition  had  seemed 
to  him  to  justify  his  own. 

It  is  certainly  disappointing  that  in  Channing's 
letters  we  have  so  little  reference  to  the  political 


194  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

events  that  made  the  fourth  decade  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  such  a  noisy  and  excited  one  for 
the  United  States.  It  is  possible  that  something 
of  this  disappointment  is  owing  to  the  scruples  of 
William  Henry  Channing,  on  whose  anticipatory 
salvage  we  are  obliged  to  place  our  principal  reli- 
ance, since  the  destruction  by  fire,  a  few  years 
since,  of  those  parts  of  Channing' s  correspondence 
which  his  nephew  did  not  use.  In  what  remains 
to  us,  the  amount  of  concrete  political  reference  is 
infinitesimal.  The  great  debate  of  Webster  and 
Hayne,  the  South  Carolina  Nullification  and  Jack- 
son's decisive  action  thereupon,  the  tariff  conces- 
sions thereto,  the  removal  of  the  deposits,  "the 
expunging  resolution,"  the  suppression  of  the  Na- 
tional Bank,  the  financial  troubles,  the  "kitchen 
cabinet,"  to  say  nothing  of  Jackson's  difficulties 
with  Mrs.  Eaton's  social  problem  —  all  these  things 
were,  apparently,  for  Dr.  Channing  as  if  they  had 
happened  in  another  world.  And  indeed  many  of 
them  had,  for  his  world  was  one  of  principles,  and 
too  much  one  of  abstract  generalizations.  He  was 
not  indifferent  to  persons,  he  was  more  than  in- 
different to  personalities.  The  impersonal  and 
uneventful  character  of  his  correspondence  is  an 
immense  deduction  from  its  charm.  But  there  are 
many  who  supply  his  lack,  few  who  invite  us  to 
his  upper  air.  The  antislavery  movement  fur- 
nishes only  a  partial  exception  to  the  rule  of 
abstract  character  and  generalized  views.  Chan- 
ning adds  nothing  to  our  knowledge  of  its  main 


LETTERS  AND   POLITICS  195 

events,  even  when  he  was  himself  a  part  of  them, 
and  the  lesser  incidents  do  not  exist  for  him. 

Turning  to  Channing  as  a  man  of  letters,  it  is 
of  prime  importance  that  we  get  the  appropriate 
point  of  view.  Neglecting  this,  we  may  well  find 
ourselves  astonished  at  the  estimation  in  which  he 
was  held  in  his  lifetime  as  a  literary  character  and 
at  his  own  literary  self-consciousness.  His  purely 
literary  output,  or  what  was  then  considered  so, 
was  limited  to  three  or  four  articles  in  the  "  Chris- 
tian Examiner,"  which  were  published  between 
the  years  1825  and  1830.  I  say  "three  or  four," 
because  the  two  Napoleon  articles  were  one  article 
in  two  parts.  In  our  own  time  for  a  distinguished 
clergyman  to  drop  into  literature  flutters  nobody. 
He  may  drop  to  the  depth  of  a  short  story  or  a 
novel,  or  into  poetry,  and  we  are  not  surprised. 
But  Dr.  Channing's  "  Examiner "  articles  were 
great  events  in  Boston  and  beyond  when  they 
appeared.  Dr.  Furness  tells  us  that  he  was  sur- 
prised to  find  Dr.  Channing  making  the  Milton 
venture.  In  the  Unitarian  circle,  after  the  first 
doubt  of  its  propriety  had  subsided,  it  was  prob- 
ably thought  superior  to  Macaulay's  "Milton," 
which  had  appeared  a  year  earlier  in  the  "  Edin- 
burgh Review."  Something  must  be  pardoned, 
Dr.  Furness  says,  to  the  admiration  of  the  small 
new  sect  for  what  was  done  by  its  own  chief. 
More  must  be  pardoned  to  the  state  of  literature 
at  that  time  in  the  United  States.  About  1830 
Channing  wrote  certain  elaborate  "  Remarks  on  Na- 


196  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

tional  Literature,"  which  should  go  to  the  account 
of  his  h'terary  achievement.  The  article  was  writ- 
ten in  the  future  tense.  The  writer  was  no  lau- 
dator tempoHs  acti.  He  calls  no  honored  names 
except  those  strangely  contrasted  ones  of  Edwards 
and  Franklin.  A  better  illustration  of  the  lucus 
a  non  lucendo  it  would  be  hard  to  find.  And  yet 
in  1830  there  were  some  brave  beginnings  of  the 
century's  literature  which  a  less  abstract  method 
than  Channing's  would  have  interwoven  with  the 
texture  of  his  prophetical  discourse.  That  he  was 
kin  with  Allston  and  Dana  may  have  made  him 
less  than  kind  to  them,  but  Bryant  had  already 
written  his  best  pieces,  "  Thanatopsis "  and  "  A 
Forest  Hymn,"  stiU  unexcelled ;  Pierpont  some 
admirable  things ;  while  if  Charles  Brockden 
Brown's  chamber  of  horrors  did  not  invite  him, 
Irving's  "  Sketch  Book  "  should  have  done  so,  and 
Cooper's  likeness  to  Scott  should  not  have  been 
sufficient  to  obscure  the  rugged  strength  of  his 
own  proper  face.  But  when  Channing's  articles 
appeared  there  was  no  such  "  mob  of  gentlemen 
who  write  with  ease  "  and  write  extremely  well  as 
we  have  now.  Judged  by  purely  literary  standards, 
hundreds  of  these  write  better  than  Channing. 
But  "  in  the  country  of  the  blind,  the  one-eyed 
man  is  king,"  and  it  is  not  strange  that  under  the 
general  conditions  that  prevailed  from  1825  to 
1830  Channing's  literary  product  earned  for  him 
the  enthusiastic  admiration  of  his  co-religionists 
and  of  many  who  were  not  joined  to  their  assem- 
bly. 


LETTERS  AND  POLITICS  197 

It  is  eloquent  of  Channing's  confidence  in  his 
own  powers  that  having  read  Macaulay's  essay  he 
should  follow  it  up  with  his  own.  Bracketing  the 
two  in  one  reading,  I  find  Macaulay's,  though  it 
was  his  first  "  Edinburgh  "  essay  and  had  faults 
which  he  outgrew,  incomparably  superior  to  Chan- 
ning's  as  literature,  while  Channing's  leaves  a 
moral  afterglow  which  is  more  inspiring  than  the 
dazzling  brilliancy  of  Macaulay's  noonday  light. 
Channing's  introductory  defence  of  poetry,  which 
seems  to  us  remarkable  for  its  banality,  probably 
seemed  much  less  flat  to  the  "  Examiner  "  public. 
The  criticism  upon  Milton's  poetry,  to  those  of  us 
who  have  read  the  criticisms  of  Scherer  and  Seeley 
and  Arnold  and  Pattison,  must  seem  frail  indeed 
compared  with  theirs.  It  is  when  we  come  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  Milton's  religious  and  ecclesiastical  opin- 
ions that  Channing  is  himself  again.  He  is  against 
Milton's  opinion  that  the  primitive  church  was 
meant  to  be  a  model  for  aU  ages ;  "  that  Christian- 
ity, instead  of  being  carried  forward,  was  to  be  car- 
ried bach  to  its  original  purity."  He  is  for  him 
when  he  would  "  strip  the  clergy  of  that  peculiar 
artificial  sanctity,  with  which  superstition  has  long 
arrayed  them,  and  which  has  made  their  simple, 
benignant  office  one  of  the  worst  instruments  of 
ambition  and  despotism."  He  would  not  have  an 
ignorant  ministry,  but  he  woidd  not  have  religious 
instruction  a  monopoly  of  ministers ;  he  would  have 
men  of  superior  intelligence  engaging  in  it  and 
substituting  "  a  more  natural,  free,  and  various 


198  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

eloquence  for  the  teclmical  and  monotonous  mode 
of  treating  subjects  which  clings  so  obstinately  to 
the  performances  of  the  pulpit."  Of  evolution  be- 
fore Spencer,  perhaps  more  Channing's  than  Mil- 
ton's, we  have  a  good  example  where  Channing 
says  of  the  great  classical  Puritan,  — 

He  believed  justly  that  all  the  periods  and  generations 
of  the  human  family  are  bound  together  by  a  subhme 
connection,  and  that  the  wisdom  of  each  age  is  chiefly  a 
derivation  from  all  preceding  ages,  not  excepting  the 
most  ancient,  just  as  a  noble  stream  through  its  whole 
extent  and  in  its  widest  overflowings  still  holds  commu- 
nion with  its  infant  springs. 

Describing  Milton,  Channing  unconsciously  de- 
scribed himself  :  "  He  rendered  to  mankind  a  far 
greater  service  than  that  of  a  teacher  of  an  im- 
proved theology.  He  taught  and  exemplified  that 
spirit  of  intellectual  freedom,  through  which  all 
the  great  conquests  of  truth  are  to  be  achieved  and 
by  which  the  human  mind  is  to  attain  to  a  new 
consciousness  of  its  sublime  faculties  and  to  invigo- 
rate and  expand  itself  forever." 

Henry  T.  Tuckerman,  a  critic  much  valued  in 
his  generation,  writing  of  Dr.  Channing  in  a  tone 
of  mild  depreciation,  makes  an  allegation  which 
must  be  very  shocking  to  those  whose  admiration 
of  Channing  is  without  any  qualification.  He  says, 
"  Egotism  was  a  striking  trait  in  Dr.  Channing." 
Those  who  know  Channing  best  will  know  precisely 
what  this  means  and  what  measure  of  truth  there 
is  in  it.     For  it  does  contain  a  measure  of  truth. 


LETTERS  AND   POLITICS  199 

Mr.  Tuckerman  furnished  various  particulars : 
"  The  first  person  singular  appears  on  every  page 
of  his  writings."  Yes,  and  often  because  he  would 
have  it  understood  that  he  is  only  saying  what  he 
thinks.  "  His  opinions  are  rather  announced  as 
truths  than  suggested  as  possibilities."  Yes,  be- 
cause by  long  and  deep  meditation  they  had  become 
inwrought  with  the  substance  of  his  personality. 
"  He  had  the  serious,  collected  air  of  one  who  had 
enjoyed  special  revelations ; "  "  his  calm  trust  in 
himseK  communicates  itself  to  his  writings  and 
acts,  and  hence  the  authority  they  exert  over  the 
multitude."  Mr.  Tuckerman  finds  in  this  trait 
that  which  "  gives  nerve  and  clearness  to  Dr.  Chan- 
ning's  diction  and  impressiveness  to  his  style." 
Acknowledging  its  reality,  I  find  in  it  a  deeper 
significance,  —  Channing's  complete  surrender  to 
the  sway  of  his  few  leading  thoughts.  It  was  as 
entrusted  with  these  that  he  could  not  but  take 
himself  very  seriously.  The  apparent  egotism  was 
his  recognition  of  the  impersonal  truth.  It  was 
the  egotism  of  that  self-effacement  which  declares, 
"  The  words  which  I  speak  unto  you  are  not  mine, 
but  the  Father's  that  sent  me." 

It  is  not  to  be  denied,  however,  that  an  acute 
self -consciousness  was  one  of  the  most  character- 
istic attributes  of  Channing's  personality.  It  was 
fostered  by  the  isolating  habits  of  his  life ;  by  the 
immense  deference  that  was  paid  to  him,  try  as  he 
would  to  check  its  grosser  exhibitions ;  by  his  ap- 
prehension of  the  greatness  of  the  human  soul,  in 


200  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

which,  in  virtue  of  his  human  character,  he  shared. 
That  there  were  defects  of  these  qualities  only  the 
blind  or  wilful  can  deny.  There  were  defects,  too, 
of  the  larger  quality,  —  his  entire  possession  with 
the  grandeur  of  his  thought  and  work.  He  was 
too  prone  to  make  this  a  universal  standard,  to  go 
to  books  and  men  for  confirmation  of  it,  and  not 
simply  for  what  they  had  to  give.  All  his  reading 
came  around  to  this  at  last.  The  climax  of  his 
praise  of  Milton  is  that  he  was  another  Channing 
in  his  main  intent ;  the  climax  of  his  dispraise  of 
Napoleon  is  that  he  was  not  a  man  of  the  Chan- 
ning kind,  a  man  of  the  brooding  intellect  and  the 
reformer's  zeal.  This  was  the  brunt  of  Hazlitt's 
criticism,  and  it  was  well  conceived.  A  defect  of 
sympathy  was  the  concomitant  of  Channing's  pro- 
found engrossment  in  his  personal  ideals.  He  had 
no  use  for  men  who  sailed  by  other  stars.  He 
might  praise  them  vrith  his  lips,  but  his  heart  was 
far  from  them.  He  might  recognize  them  in  set 
terms,  but  the  emphasis  of  his  enthusiasm  and  in- 
sistence was  exclusively  upon  the  words  of  his  pe- 
culiar message  and  on  his  own  type  of  personality. 
So  it  happened  that  he  was  not  a  discerner  of 
spirits.  WiUiam  Henry  Channing  writes  that  the 
Fenelon  of  the  Fenelon  article  is  Channing  him- 
self. He  is  too  much  so.  In  many  things  Fenelon 
was  quite  other  than  Channing.  When  we  read 
Sainte-Beuve,  the  perfect  critic,  upon  Fenelon,  we 
appreciate  the  defect  of  Channing's  method.  Sainte- 
Beuve  is  disengaging  for  us  Fenelon's  personality ; 


LETTERS  AND   POLITICS  201 

Channing  is   taking  another  text  for  his  habitual 
presentation  of  his  besetting  thought. 

Lamb,  asked  by  Coleridge,  "  Did  you  ever  hear 
me  preach?"  replied  with  his  habitual  stammer 
that  he  had  never  heard  him  do  anything  else. 
To  Channing,  asking  the  same  question,  a  candid 
friend  might  properly  have  made  Lamb's  answer. 
He  was  subdued  to  the  business  that  he  worked  at 
to  a  degree  of  which  he  was  painfully  conscious, 
and  against  which  he  chafed,  but  which  he  could 
not  put  off.  In  his  letters  and  conversation  he 
slid  easily  into  the  sermon  tone.  So  in  the  "  Ex- 
aminer "  articles.  The  best  part  of  the  Fenelon 
article  reproduces  the  great  sermon  on  self-denial, 
the  contention  in  either  case  being  that  we  should 
not  deny  our  reason.  The  second  article  on  Napo- 
leon reads  like  a  slightly  altered  sermon  on  tempta- 
tions to  the  abuse  of  power.  In  the  first  there  are 
swelling  passages  which  read  as  if  written  with  the 
Sunday  audience  in  the  writer's  mind.  We  know 
Napoleon  as  Channing  did  not,  for  better  and 
for  worse.  Could  he  have  read  Lanfrey's  story  of 
his  diplomatic  treacheries,  he  might  have  dipped 
his  pen  in  blacker  ink.  But  he  does  less  than  jus- 
tice to  the  intellectual  and  civic  Napoleon  of  the 
great  Code.  In  general  the  article  differs  from 
a  biographical  study  much  as  a  fourteenth-cen- 
tury "  morality  "  differs  from  one  of  Shakespeare's 
plays.  But  for  preaching  it  is  grand.  Because 
Channing's  preaching  so  fed  upon  his  vitals,  he  had 
little  strength  for  other  things.     The  preacher  in 


202  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

him  was  a  jealous  sovereign  who  could  admit  no 
brother  near  the  throne. 

If  the  "  Examiner  "  articles  brought  upon  him 
encomiums  that  were  excessive,  they  brought  upon 
him  censures  which  erred  in  like  manner  and  de- 
gree. The  most  famed  of  these  were  Hazlitt's  and 
Brougham's  articles  in  the  "  Edinburgh  Review." 
It  was  Channing's  apparent  invasion  of  the  liter- 
ary sphere  that  invited  these  reprisals.  Had  he 
remained  simply  the  preacher  he  would,  probably, 
have  been  let  alone.  It  was  "  significant  of  much  " 
that  an  essayist  of  Hazlitt's  standing  and  a  politician 
of  Lord  Brougham's  should  consider  Channing  a 
fit  subject  for  their  sublime  denunciation.  It  meant 
for  one  thing  that  Channing  had,  especially  when 
Brougham  wrote,  in  1839,  an  English  vogue 
which  no  other  American  writer  had  at  that  time 
achieved.  Hazlitt's  review  appeared  in  1829.^  He 
said,  "  We  like  Dr.  Channing's  Sermons  best ; 
his  Criticisms  less ;  his  Politics  the  least  of  all." 
To  the  first  term  of  this  series  no  one  can  demur. 
Many,  and  the  most  of  us,  would  invert  the  order 
of  the  second  and  the  third.  But  to  Hazlitt,  who 
had  glorified  Napoleon  in  four  volumes  octavo, 
Channing's  politics  meant  his  execration  of  Napo- 
leon's character  and  career.^     Hazlitt  was  right  in 

^  It  was  based  upon  Sermons  and  Tracts ;  including  Remarks 
on  the  Character  and  Writings  of  Milton  and  of  Fenelon ;  and  an 
Analysis  of  the  Character  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  This  collection 
anticipated  the  first  American  collection  of  Channing's  writings, 
the  copyright  of  which  was  not  taken  out  until  April,  1830. 

*  Charles  Sumner's  senior  part  in  1830  reflected  severely  upon 


LETTERS   AND   POLITICS  203 

his  contention  that,  making  an  example  of  Napo- 
leon, his  ethical  abstraction  did  scant  justice  to 
the  immense  variety  of  Napoleon's  genius.  To 
see  only  the  selfish  and  cruel  tyrant  in  that  perso- 
nal congeries  of  stupendous  gifts  and  powers  was 
significant  of  a  certain  narrowness  in  Channing's 
ethical  obsession.  He  galled  Hazlitt's  kibe  in 
another  fashion  when  he  separated  himself  from 
that  Socinian  type  of  Unitarianism  to  which  Haz- 
litt's father,  a  Unitarian  minister,^  was  attached. 
But  what  must  have  confounded  Channing's  Amer- 
ican friends  and  admirers  beyond  measure  was  the 
assault  on  Channing's  intellectual  morality :  — 

Dr.  Channing  is  a  great  tactician  in  reasoning ;  and 
reasoning  has  nothing  to  do  with  tactics.  We  do  not 
like  to  see  a  writer  constantly  trying  to  steal  a  march 
upon  opinion  without  having  his  retreat  cut  off  —  full  of 
pretensions  and  void  of  offence.  It  is  as  bad  as  the 
opposite  extreme  of  outraging  decorum  at  every  step ; 
and  is  only  a  more  covert  mode  of  attracting  attention, 
and  gaining  surreptitious  applause.  We  never  saw  any- 
thing more  guarded  in  this  respect  than  Dr.  Channing's 
"  Tracts  and  Sermons,"  —  more  completely  suspended 
between  heaven  and  earth.  He  keeps  an  eye  on  both 
worlds ;  kisses  hands  to  the  reading  public  all  round  ; 
and  does  his  best  to  stand  well  with  different  sects  and 
parties.  He  is  always  in  advance  of  the  line,  in  an  ami- 
able and  imposing  attitude,  but  never  far  from  succor. 

Channing's  view,  possibly  taking-  its  cue  from  Hazlitt's  article. 
He  came  round  to  Channing  in  due  course  and  in  general  looked 
to  him  for  guidance  as  to  no  other  person,  until  Channing's  death. 
1  ^Vho,  as  -we  have  seen  in  chap,  iv.,  had  helped  Dr.  Freeman's 
Boston  Unitarianism  to  a  happy  birth. 


204  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

It  would  be  difficult  to  frame  an  indictment  less 
correspondent  with  Channing's  traditional  reputa- 
tion than  was  this.  His  Unitarian  friends,  and,  more 
obviously,  his  orthodox  opponents,  must  have  won- 
dered whether  the  British  edition  of  Channing's 
writings  had  not  been  emasculated,  or,  possibly,  an- 
other set  of  writings  been  published  under  his  name. 
But  Hazlitt's  savage  criticism  may  well  give  us 
momentary  pause.  It  reflects  the  caution  of  Chan- 
ning's intellectual  procedure,  his  anxiety  to  do  jus- 
tice to  all  sides  ;  and  it  reminds  us  that  what  would 
have  been  timidity  in  the  longitude  of  London  was 
courage  in  the  longitude  of  Boston,  —  in  the  little 
Puritan  town  as  compared  with  the  great  metropo- 
lis. We  can  never  take  a  just  measure  of  Chan- 
ning's moral  stature  and  the  courage  of  his  opinions 
without  a  relative  appreciation  of  the  stunting  at- 
mosphere in  which  he  grew,  the  scared  and  petrified 
conservatism  from  which  he  freed  himself  as  best 
he  could.  As  an  account  of  Channing's  inner  con- 
sciousness and  his  relation  to  the  public  and  his 
work,  a  grosser  misconception  than  that  of  Hazlitt's 
article  would  be  quite  impossible. 

But  Lord  Brougham's  criticism  was  that  of  one 
resolved  to  better  Hazhtt's  instructions,  however 
hard  it  might  go  with  Channing.  It  was  interest- 
ing to  me  to  find  that  its  next  neighbor  in  the 
"  Edinburgh,"  which  had  gathered  "  dust  o'  books  " 
for  more  than  sixty  years,  was  Macaulay's  famous 
review  of  Gladstone's  "  Church  and  State,"  in  the 
opening  paragraph  of  which  he  describes  Gladstone 


LETTERS  AND  POLITICS  205 

as  "  the  rising  hope  of "  certain  "  stern  and  un- 
bending Tories."  Less  contrary  was  that  hope  to 
Gladstone's  ultimate  repute  than  Lord  Brougham's 
view  of  Channing's  literary  ambition  to  the  fact  of 
his  habitual  simplicity.  It  is  against  Channing's 
style  that  he  directs  his  accusation.  "  False  Taste 
—  Dr.  Channing  "  runs  the  head-line  through  some 
sixteen  pages.  Channing  is  held  up  as  a  flagrant 
example  of  euphuistic  prettiness  and  of  intentional 
and  meaningless  obscurity  —  vices  from  which 
Channing  sought  and  prayed  to  be  delivered  as 
from  a  dreadful  fate.  The  accusation  was  a  strange 
one  as  directed  against  an  author  whose  writing 
has  fitly  been  described  as  "  naked  thought,"  —  of 
whom  Renan  wrote,  "His  works  display  no  literary 
ambition."  But  Brougham  had  found  a  handle 
in  a  passage  in  the  Milton  article,  where  Chan- 
ning had  a  good  word  to  say  for  Milton's  tortuous 
obscurity.  He  never  wrote  anything  less  character- 
istic, anything  more  at  variance  with  his  habitual 
endeavor  to  make  his  meaning  plain.  And  who 
of  us  would  not  give  acres  of  Lord  Brougham's 
and  much  other  perspicuity  for  a  few  patches  of 
Milton's  daring  and  splendid  involution?  Chan- 
ning's  eccentricity  from  his  habitual  orbit  was  at 
this  point  one  of  the  most  pardonable  aberrations 
of  his  life.  But  Lord  Brougham  referred  his  read- 
ers to  particular  passages  in  Channing  as  guilty 
of  that  obscurity  which  Channing  had  too  rashly 
praised.  The  trouble  was,  in  part,  that  Channing 
was  endeavoring  to  find  a  language  for  realities 


206  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

wMch  evaded  Brougham's  utilitarian  rule  of  thumb. 
At  the  same  time  there  may  have  been  some  jus- 
tification of  the  charges  made.  Ren  an  was  too 
genial,  and  not  accurate,  when  he  said,  "  There  is 
not  one  of  Channing's  writings  that  exhibits  the 
smallest  pretensions  to  art  and  style."  Channing 
was  the  conscious  stylist  in  all  his  published  writ- 
ings. In  the  "  Examiner "  articles  he  was  more 
ambitious  than  elsewhere,  and  striving  for  a  richer, 
struck  a  falser  note.  Generally  his  style  is  remark- 
able for  its  lucidity.  He  knew  that  some  things 
were  impossible  for  him.  Charles  Lamb's  style 
was  his  ideal  of  perfection  ;  Goldsmith's  contend- 
ing with  it.  But  he  wrote  to  Miss  Aikin  that, 
while  he  thought  himself  able  to  do  something  in  a 
kind  of  eloquent  writing,  the  ease  and  charm  of 
Addison  and  Goldsmith  were  heights  that  he  could 
never  reach. 

It  is  commonly  set  down  to  his  credit  that  he 
never  read  Brougham's  article.  His  not  doing  so 
was  one  of  his  mistakes.  If  he  had  conned  and 
inwardly  digested  it,  it  might  have  done  him  good. 
He  was,  perhaps,  too  disdainful  of  external  aids. 
It  is  permitted  us  to  believe  that  a  more  liberal 
scholarship  and  a  fuller  habit  of  reading  would 
not  have  been  detrimental  to  his  mind  and  work. 
A  scholar  he  was  not,  though  suffering  the  lin- 
guistic tools  of  his  profession,  Greek  and  Hebrew, 
to  rust  in  a  less  degree  than  many  of  the  clergy 
now,  or  even  then.  Of  the  New  Testament  he 
was  a  persistent  student  in  the  naive,  unscientific 


LETTERS  AND   POLITICS  207 

fashion  of  his  time.     He  was  probably  a  good 
Latinist,  and  well  skilled  in  French,  reading  his 
Fenelon  in  a  splendid  set  of  quartos,  which  have 
to-day  lost  but  little  of  their  first  magnificence. 
Madame  de  Stael's  "  Germany "  first  introduced 
him  to  German  literature.     Upon  the  philosophic 
side,  it  brought  him  confirmation  of  many  things 
he  had  been  thinking  privately.     Coleridge  and 
Carlyle  took  him  farther  on  that  road,  but  where 
the  translators  failed  him,  he  stopped  short.     He 
knew  Kichter  and    Schiller  and   Goethe  well,  — 
Schiller's  personality  appealing  to  him  more  than 
Goethe's,  whose  selfishness  was  an  offence.    As  for 
Channing's   general  reading,   it  was  much  more 
extensive  than  it  has  commonly  been  represented. 
It  was  far  enough  from  Theodore  Parker's  insa- 
tiable voracity,  and  the  meat  on  which  he  fed  was 
not  that  purveyed  by  the  great  scholars.    Nor  had 
he  Parker's  passion  for  old  books.     The  new  and 
newest  had  for  him  a  much  greater  attraction.    He 
enjoyed  the  shock  of  such  a  manner  as  Carlyle's, 
reading  everything  he  wrote  with  avid  interest ;  so 
Emerson's  earlier  things.     For  a  good  idea  of  his 
general  reading,  one  cannot  do  better  than  to  go 
to  Miss  Peabody's  "  Reminiscences  "  and  his  cor- 
respondence with  Miss  Aikin,  in  whose    literary 
friendship  he  was  fortunate.     A  daughter  of  Dr. 
John  Aikin,  and  a  niece  of  Mrs.  Barbauld,  she 
was  a  writer  of  no  mean  abihty  on  historical  and 
other  lines.     In  his  letters  to  her,  less  constrained 
and  pleasanter  as  they  go  on,  we  get  a  picture  of 


208  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

his  everyday  mind  that  is  most  attractive  and 
agreeable.  Not  that  the  letters  on  either  side  are 
ideal  letters.  The  correspondence  was  too  much 
an  exchange  of  brief  essays  on  current  reading  and 
events.  But  Dr.  Channing's  letters  have  this  ad- 
vantage over  Miss  Peabody's  reports  of  his  con- 
versations, —  we  know  in  them  that  we  are  getting 
Dr.  Channing  pure  and  simple,  and  of  that  we  are 
never  quite  sure  with  Miss  Peabody's  reports. 
Often  we  have  that  effect  of  the  Fourth  Gospel, 
where  the  great  teacher's  style  is  so  much  that  of 
the  narrator  that  it  breeds  suspicion.  But  read 
either  Miss  Peabody's  "  Keminiscences "  or  the 
Aikin  letters,  and  we  find  that  Channing's  read- 
ing was  quite  other  than  that  modicum  of  the  ordi- 
nary misapprehension  heretofore.  It  included  the 
best  and  better  books  of  his  generation  to  a  liberal 
extent.  If  it  is  hard  to  sympathize  with  certain 
of  his  admirations,  we  may  well  ask  ourselves  if 
our  own  are  likely  to  bear  the  tests  of  time  and  tide 
as  well.  Mrs.  Hemans  and  Joanna  Baillie  do  not 
stir  us  now,  but  they  might  with  better  warrant  than 
some  of  our  own  time  to  whom  we  are  more  partial. 
What  Scott  thought  of  Miss  Bailhe  and  Miss  Edge- 
worth  makes  Channing's  opinion  of  them  at  least 
respectable.  Some  of  us  are  going  back  to  Miss 
Edge  worth  with  considerable  zest.  If  Channing 
went  astray  in  thinking  so  much  of  Scott  (Howells 
judice'),  he  went  astray  with  a  large  company,  in- 
cluding nearly  all  the  better  spirits  of  his  own  and 
later  times.    I  recall  no  reference  to  Jane  Austen, 


LETTERS   AND   POLITICS  209 

but  I  trust  he  did  not  miss  that  fountain  of  un- 
spoiled delight. 

Channing's  favorite  contemporary  poet  was 
Wordsworth,  and  therein  he  made  no  mistake.  He 
knew  him  well,  and  though  he  seldom  quoted  him, 
we  often  are  aware,  some  whiff  of  scent  apprising 
us,  that  his  vase  has  been  with  Wordsworth's  rose. 
It  is  possible  that  his  delight  in  Coleridge's  prose 
made  relatively  dim  his  satisfaction  in  his  incom- 
parable verse.  His  attraction  to  Southey  seems 
to  have  been  less  than  was  common  in  his  day,  and 
to  have  anticipated  the  verdict  of  posterity.  Shelley 
he  called  "  a  seraph  gone  astray,"  a  designation 
having  in  it  more  of  praise  than  blame.  If  he  did 
not  care  for  Keats,  it  was  perhaps  because  he  was 
discouraged  by  the  over-sweetness  of  "  Endymion." 
His  judgment  of  Byron  was  that  his  letters  testi- 
fied to  his  intellectual  force  as  did  not  his  poetry. 
This  was  one  of  many  of  Channing's  judgments 
that  the  consensus  of  time  and  criticism  has  con- 
firmed. At  all  points  there  was  a  sharp  reaction 
on  the  books  he  read.  He  prized  them  to  the  de- 
gree they  made  him  think,  sending  him  back  upon 
his  "  central  solitude  "  to  see  how  they  agreed  or 
disagreed  with  what  was  there.  He  read  widely 
in  history  and  biography,  and  in  moral  and  social 
philosophy.  The  depreciation  of  his  reading,  here- 
tofore, is  mainly  a  caricature  of  the  fact  that  his 
reading  was  the  smaller  part  of  his  intellectual 
life  ;  the  larger  was  his  meditation  on  the  books  he 
read  and  on  the  ideas  that  arose  in  his  own  mind. 


210  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

A  more  meditative  habit  I  have  not  found  in  any 
one  of  many  dozens  of  biographies.  For  days  and 
weeks  together  he  turned  things  over  in  his  mind, 
getting  every  possible  light  upon  them.  He  was 
never  happier  than  when  some  new  book  confirmed 
effectively  his  own  dearest  thoughts.  By  this  hoop 
of  steel  he  was  grappled  to  Degerando,^  whose  "  Du 
Perfectionnement  Moral "  brought  back  the  glow 
of  his  young  joy  in  Hutcheson.  Channing's  origi- 
nality was  far  less  that  of  novelty  than  that  of 
vital  appropriation.  Not  only  did  he  "pounce 
upon  his  own  wherever  he  found  it "  with  keen 
avidity,  but  he  made  others'  thoughts  his  own  by 
the  sincerity  with  which  he  adopted  them,  by  the 
free  and  careful  consent  of  his  deliberate  thought. 
No  man's  body  of  thought  was  ever,  I  think,  more 
honestly  his  own  than  Channing's,  so  patiently 
did  his  convictions  wait  upon  his  brooding  quiet- 
ness, and  meet  the  challenge  of  his  hesitations  and 
his  doubts. 

Our  next  step  is  to  a  consideration  of  the  mes- 
sage which  he  brought  with  him  from  his  study 
into  the  high  pulpit  of  the  Federal  Street  Church. 

^  Channing  singles  him  out  in  his  National  Literature,  where  he 
is  pleading  for  other  European  aids  to  reflection  than  those  fur- 
nished by  England.  I  use  Channing's  form  of  the  French  writer's 
name,  though  I  believe  Gerando  is  the  more  proper.  The  book 
was  translated  by  Miss  Peabody  in  1830,  and  republished  in  1860. 
The  translation  "  endeavors  to  be  strictly  faithful  to  the  author's 
ideas,  while  keeping  in  mind  a  decidedly  different  style  of  expres- 
sion." Gerando  was  one  of  the  men  to  whom  Channing  gave 
young  Sumner  letters  when  he  went  abroad  in  1838.  For  Sum- 
ner's visit  to  Gerando,  see  Pierce's  Memoir  of  Sumner,  i.  254,  255. 


LETTERS  AND   POLITICS  211 

Before  entering  upon  this  I  would  fain  produce 
some  image  of  the  man  as  he  appeared  to  those 
whose  privilege  it  was  to  attend  upon  his  ministra- 
tion of  religion.  Of  Gambardella's  portrait,  painted 
in  1839,  we  are  assured  that  it  is  "remarkably- 
faithful,"  indeed  "  faultless."  The  same  friend  ^ 
from  whose  lips  we  had  these  things  a  few  years 
since,  tells  of  a  velvet  softness  in  his  face,  and  of 
his  smile  "  all  the  sweeter  for  the  appearance  around 
the  mouth  of  physical  weakness,  through  which 
it  struggled,  a  sunbeam  through  a  cloud."  The 
rather  high  cheek  bones  and  hoUow  cheeks  gave 
him  an  emaciated  look.  In  bodily  presence  Paul 
was  not  more  weak.  Short  of  stature,  he  was 
slight  of  frame  and  very  spare  of  flesh.  His 
person  conveyed  the  impression  of  such  feebleness 
as  made  his  hold  on  life  seem  a  precarious  tenure. 
Robert  CoUyer  was  once  the  proud  possessor  of  one 
of  Channing's  coats.  Like  Samuel's  it  was,  he  said, 
a  httle  one,  as  if  made  for  a  boy.  But  Mr.  Collyer 
may  have  compared  it  with  his  own.  His  great 
fist  beside  Channing's  little  one  would  have  af- 
forded a  more  notable  contrast.  When  Chan- 
ning  told  Dr.  Turn  ess  that  he  "  could  n't  strihe  a 
man,"  Dr.  Furness  could  not  help  wondering  if 
the  man  would  feel  it  if  he  did.  But  Channing's 
slight  physical  habit  was  somewhat  obscured  by 
the  manner  of  his  pulpit  dress.     I  have  seen  the 

1  William  Henry  Furness,  born  in  1802,  was  ordained  in  1825, 
and  at  the  same  time  installed  minister  of  the  Philadelphia  So- 
ciety, of  which  he  was  pastor  emeritus  when  he  died  in  189G. 


212  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

beautiful  silk  belted  gown  which  he  wore  in  the 
pulpit  under  his  surplice  ;  also  the  thick  quilted 
silk  cloak  or  long  cape  that  he  wore  over  the  gown 
from  his  house  to  the  church,^  and  the  tiny  bands 
which  he  discarded  at  some  time  in  the  course  of 
his  ministry.  I  have  seen  one  of  his  neck-cloths, 
wonderful  for  its  fineness  and  for  the  narrowest 
hem  imaginable.  With  his  throat  swathed  in  that 
cradle  sheet,  I  wonder  that  his  vocal  organs  could 
produce  an  audible  sound.  But  what  says  Dr. 
Furness  ?  — 

His  voice,  —  ah,  that  wonderful  voice  !  —  wonderful 
not  for  the  music  of  its  tones,  but  for  its  extraordinary 
power  of  expression.  Whether  from  the  delicacy  of  the 
vocal  organ  or  from  bodily  weakness,  I  do  not  know,  it 
was  flexible  to  tremulousness.  When  he  began  to  dis- 
course, it  ran  up  and  down,  even  in  the  articulation  of  a 
single  polysyllabic  word,  in  so  strange  a  fashion  that 
they  who  heard  him  for  the  first  time  could  not  antici- 
pate its  effect,  —  how,  before  it  ceased,  that  voice  would 
thrill  them  to  the  inmost.  I  cannot  liken  it  to  any- 
thing but  a  huge  sail,  flapping  about  at  first  at  random, 
but  soon  taking  the  wind,  swelling  out  most  majestically, 
as  Sydney  Smith  said  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  that, 
"  when  the  spirit  came  upon  him,  he  spread  his  enormous 
canvas,  and  launched  into  a  wide  sea  of  eloquence." 

1  Mrs.  Dall  writes  rae  of  seeing  him  enter  the  pulpit  wearing 
a  large  red  shawl,  and  blames  his  wife  for  that  defect  of  taste.  But 
Dr.  Channing  had  a  will  of  his  own,  and  Mrs.  Chaniiing  did  not 
often  err  upon  the  side  of  taste.  Where  Channing  was  indifferent 
except  to  neatness,  she  had  an  exquisite  regard  for  his  apparel. 
Only  the  finest  underwear,  she  thought,  was  good  enough  for 
him,  when,  had  he  known  in  what  fine  silk  and  linen  he  was 
dressed,  a  hair-cloth  shirt  would  less  have  torn  his  flesh. 


r^- 


-*'*''^^^^4&b;*u  ^ 


^/t .?/ 


'/-^ 


^ 


LETTERS  AND  POLITICS  213 

We  have  had  many  testimonies  to  the  magic  of 
that  voice  and  to  the  luminous  dilation  of  the  deep- 
set  gray  eyes.  There  was  an  illusion  of  increas- 
ing physical  height  and  amplitude  as  his  discourse 
drew  on  to  its  deeper  part.  His  reading  of  hymns 
and  Bible  passages  is  described  as  exceedingly 
impressive.  A  stillness  waited  on  it  that  could 
be  felt  and  almost  heard,  it  was  so  positive.  He 
made  single  words  so  big  with  meaning,  says  Dr. 
Furness,  that  could  the  eye  have  reproduced  them 
they  would  have  covered  the  side  wall  of  the 
church.  Here  was  something  very  different  from 
Whitefield's  mellifluous  "Mesopotamia."  Here 
was  the  enlargement  of  the  informing  soul.  The 
strength  of  Dr.  Channing's  preaching  was  that  of 
his  conviction  of  the  reahty  of  his  message  and  its 
importance  to  men's  lives.  Those  who  heard  him 
felt  that  his  inmost  soul  was  uttering  itself  in  ser- 
mon, hymn,  and  prayer.  "  Preaching,"  says  Dr. 
Dewey,  "  was  the  great  action  of  his  life.  It  was 
the  greatest  action  that  could  be  demanded  of  any 
life."  If  ever  a  man  magnified  his  office,  Chan- 
ning  did  so,  and  in  the  loftiest  possible  way.  He 
could  not  imagine  a  more  sacred  task  than  that 
which  every  sermon  called  him  to  perform. 

In  W.  H.  Channing's  somewhat  grandiloquent 
account  of  his  uncle's  preaching  we  read  with 
special  pleasure  of  "  the  owners  of  pews  hospitably 
welcoming  strangers,"  for  such  was  not  the  Boston 
manner  of  those  days.  Bather  a  man's  pew  was 
his  castle,  as  was  not  his  house.     But  the  social 


214  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

bonds  may  well  have  been  dissolved  for  those 
caught  up  into  the  preacher's  vision  of  a  new 
humanity  in  which  men  would  be  brothers  all.  The 
sermon  over,  there  was  little  remaining  in  the 
preacher  of  that  nervous  elasticity  with  which  he 
had  hurried  up  the  pulpit  stairs.  The  virtue  had 
gone  out  of  him.  He  was  now  to  pay  the  penalty 
of  physical  and  cerebral  prostration  and  collapse ; 
of  sleepless,  agitated  hours.  Reading  of  this  recur- 
rent aspect  of  his  suffering  and  heroic  life,  one 
thinks  of  Shelley's  self -description  in  the  "  Ado- 
nais,"  and  feels  that  it  was  not  inapplicable  to 
Channing  ;  that  here,  too,  was  — 

a  power 
Girt  round  with  weakness,  that  could  scarce  uplift 
The  weight  of  the  superincumbent  hour. 


CHAPTER  Vin 

WHAT  CHAINING  PREACHED 

It  would  be  an  abuse  of  terms  to  say  that  for 
our  knowledge  of  what  Channing  preached  we  are 
limited  to  the  six  volumes^  published  in  1841  and 
to  the  volume  published  in  1873,  "The  Perfect 
Life,"  because  the  fulness  of  this  representation  of 
his  mind  prevents  any  sense  of  limitation.  If,  in  ad- 
dition, we  had  all  the  manuscript  sermons  that  were 
destroyed  by  that  melancholy  burning  on  the  trans- 
continental train  (September,  1900),  it  is  unlikely 
that  they  would  add  much  to  our  impression.  This 
might,  with  their  help,  be  more  extensive  than  it 
is  now ;  it  could  hardly  be  more  intensive.  There 
is  no  aspect  of  Channing' s  preaching  or  his  thought 
which  is  not  fully  illustrated  by  the  volumes  of 
1841  and  "The  Perfect  Life."  These,  moreover, 
have  the  advantage  of  being  of  his  own  selection. 
This  is  true  in  a  hardly  less  degree  of  "  The  Perfect 
Life  "  than  of  the  six  earher  volumes.  The  twelve 
sermons  in  that  volume  he  stamped  with  his  approval 

1  Now  published  in  one  volume  by  the  American  Unitarian 
Association,  with  The  Perfect  Life,  1060  pages,  8vo.  The  three 
volumes  of  the  Memoir  have  been  made  similarly  inexpensive  and 
compact,  719  pages,  8vo. 


216  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

by  his  frequent  preaching  of  them,  and  he  set  some 
of  them  apart  with  a  view  to  publication.  It  must 
be  understood  that  the  order  of  their  present 
arrangement  is  that  of  the  editor,  W.  H.  Chan- 
ning,  not  that  of  Dr.  Channing,  and  that  it  does 
not  correspond  to  the  order  in  which  they  were 
written  and  preached.  The  progressive  order  in 
which  the  nephew  arranged  them  is  very  inge- 
nious, but  not  quite  convincing.  The  little  volume 
called  "  Dr.  Channing's  Note-Book,"  selected  and 
published  by  Grace  EUery  Channing  in  1887,  is 
profoundly  interesting,  but  it  gives  us  only  new 
varieties  of  Channing's  thought  —  no  new  species. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  projected  work  on  Man,^ 
from  which  we  have  some  fragments  in  the  "  Me- 
moir "  and  some  suggestive  sentences  in  the  "  Note- 
Book."  Both  confirm  the  opinion  of  Renan.  Had 
the  book  been  written  it  would  have  added  a  little 
to  our  knowledge  of  Dr.  Channing's  philosophi- 
cal opinions  (as  idealistic  as  those  of  Emerson's 
"  Nature  "),  but  in  a  form  that  would  have  been 
less  engaging  than  his  sermons,  though  we  may  be 
sure  that  the  sermon  note  would  have  been  often 
heard.  The  range  of  Channing's  preaching  was 
not  wide,  and  if  we  only  had  the  one  volume  of 
1830  ^  we  should  be  hardly  less  secure  than  we  are 

1  Of  which  Renan  says :  "  The  plan  of  this  book  was  neither  new 
nor  original.  It  would  have  been  an  essay,  like  so  many  others, 
on  man  and  human  nature,  the  perpetual  theme  of  the  Anglo- 
Scotch  philosophy,  and  no  exception  to  the  weariness  of  books  of 
this  sort." 

2  I  write  with  this  at  hand,  a  handsome  royal   octavo,  the 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  217 

now  on  pulpit  lines  ;  but  we  should  be  incom- 
parably poorer  on  lines  of  sociology  and  philan- 
thropy, including  the  antislavery  writings. 

The  larger  unity  of  Channing's  thought,  when 
he  had  got  so  far  as  "  midway  on  the  road  of  our 
life,"  so  far  transcended  its  particular  variations 
that  I  am,  I  trust,  justified  in  making  a  general 
exposition   of  his   preaching   at  this  stage  of  my 
advance,  and  in  helping  myself  with  equal  freedom 
from  the  material  produced  before  and  after  1830.1 
Of  its  controversial  import  up  to  this  date  I  have 
already  said  enough,  and  that  part  of  his  theology 
which  he  held  in  common  with  his  Unitarian  con- 
temporaries, in  a  general  way,  need  not  detain  us 
long.    Whatever  his  anticipations  of  more  modern 
thought,  any  conscious  suspicion  of  the  soundness 
of  his  supernaturalist  theory  of  Christianity  was 
not    among   them.     He  was  as   thoroughgoing  a 
supernaturalist  as  any  of  his  orthodox  opponents. 
For  the  best  expression  of  his  Christian  supernat- 
uralism  we  must  go  to  the  Dudleian  Lecture  of 
1821.     One  may  have  travelled  far  from  this  out- 
liberal  page  suiting  the  liberal  thought.    It  has  a  personal  inter- 
est for  me  because  it  was  the  valued  possession  of  Dr.  Charles 
Cotton,  of  Newport,  a  descendant  of  the  Rev.  John  Cotton,  of 
Boston,  England  and  Massachusetts,  and  was  presented  to  him  by 
a  near  relative  of  Washington  Allston.     In  1832  a  second  volume 
was  published.    It  contained  sermons  only  —  eleven  of  these  — 
which  were  all  taken  up  into  the  six  volumes  of  1841  (the  sixth 
1848).     The  selection  was  made  by  Dr.  Dewey,  Dr.  Channing's 
health  proving  unequal  to  the  task. 

1  The  volume  of  1830,  less  the  plain-spoken  preface,  which 
gave  so  much  offence,  was  taken  up  bodily  into  the  six-volume 
edition  of  1841. 


218  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

look  and  yet  not  be  so  dull  that  he  cannot  enter 
into  the  enthusiasm  which  was  aroused  by  Chan- 
ning's  exposition.  Its  arguments  were  the  stock 
arguments  of  the  time,  but  they  were  presented 
in  a  remarkably  persuasive  manner.  There  was 
demur  at  those  who,  doubting  the  miraculous  evi- 
dence for  Christianity,  were  inclined  to  rest  it 
wholly  on  internal  evidence  ;  "  for  Christianity  is 
not  only  confirmed  by  miracles,  but  is  in  itself, 
in  its  very  essence,  a  miraculous  religion.  It  is 
not  a  system  which  the  human  mind  might  have 
gathered  in  the  ordinary  course  of  nature."  No 
note  recurs  more  frequently  than  this  in  Chan- 
ning's  earlier  statements,  but  its  variations  widen 
as  he  goes  on  until  we  have  a  new  species :  the 
supernatural  designed  to  concentrate  the  natural; 
the  glory  of  the  former  its  resemblance  to  the  best 
produced  by  the  latter  and  not  its  difference  from 
it.  In  the  Dudleian  we  have,  representatively, 
the  endeavor  of  the  whole  contemporary  school  to 
reconcile  acceptance  of  the  New  Testament  mira- 
cles with  a  general  distrust  of  the  miraculous.  The 
character  of  those  miracles  and  the  moral  necessity 
for  their  occurrence  are  found  to  plead  for  them. 
Here  is  the  concession  that  the  less  the  miracle, 
the  likelier  is  it  to  be  a  valid  one,  and  we  skirt  the 
coasts  of  Locke's  opinion  that  the  doctrine  proves 
the  miracle  more  than  the  miracle  the  doctrine. 
Channing  argues  the  supernatural  character  of 
Christianity  both  from  the  incompetency  of  the 
human  mind  to  produce  it,  and  from  the  incom- 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  219 

petency  of  the  times  and  circumstances  in  which, 
and  under  which,  it  appeared.  Nowhere  is  he  less 
his  proper  self  than  in  the  first  contention;  no- 
where more  subject  to  the  limitations  of  his  time 
than  in  the  second.  His  characteristic  exaltation 
of  human  nature  should  have  prevented  his  saying 
that "  being  partakers  of  it  [human  nature]  we  can 
judge  with  sufficient  accuracy  of  the  operation  of  its 
principles  and  of  the  effects  to  which  they  are  com- 
petent." That  exaltation  of  human  nature  should 
have  made  it  easy  for  him  to  conceive  of  such  a 
"  sun  of  righteousness  "  as  Jesus,  swinging  with  easy 
and  unfettered  motion  in  its  boundless  space.  ,The 
limitations  of  his  time  appear  in  the  astonishing 
assertion  that  we  "  can  discover  in  Jesus  no  impres- 
sion of  the  time  in  which  he  lived."  Our  later 
scholarship  has  not  so  learned  Christ.  It  finds 
his  time  full  of  anticipations  of  his  thought  and 
of  agreements  with  it.^  As  for  the  personality 
of  Jesus,  personality  is  something  that  can  never 
be  accounted  for.  Its  most  splendid  apparitions 
add  little  to  our  persuasion  of  "the  transmission  of 
acquired  traits,"  and  advise  us  that  we  should 
expect  to  be  frequently  and  incalculably  surprised. 
If  all  these  surprises,  except  that  of  Jesus,  are 
accounted  "  natural,"  why  make  of  him  "  a  party 
by  himself  "  ? 

A  further  limitation  of  his  time  is  shown  in 
Channing's  treatment  of  the  Gospels,  his  elaborate 
pleading  that  they  are  not  forgeries.     No  one  who 
1  See  Professor  C.  H.  Toy's  Judaism  and  Christianity. 


220  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHAINING 

has  any  critical  standing  now  considers  that  they 
are.  Our  present  understanding  is  that  these 
gospels  "  grew  as  grows  the  grass  "  and  that,  doing 
so,  in  many  particulars  they  grew  away  from  the 
prime  facts  of  Jesus'  history ;  that  there  was,  within 
the  limits  of  the  New  Testament,  a  progressive 
idealization  of  his  person  and  office,  and  that  a 
similar  process,  quite  as  active,  filled  in  the  gap 
between  the  original  events  and  the  proto-Mark  or 
first  written  document  of  any  kind. 

Emerson  was  not  the  only  young  man  who  was 
greatly  impressed  by  the  Dudleian  Lecture.  His 
friend  William  Henry  Furness  also  heard  it  gladly 
and  got  from  it  an  impulse  that  lasted  him  more 
than  seventy  years.  The  passage  which  gave  it 
was  that  on  the  internal  evidence  of  the  truth  of 
the  New  Testament  narratives  from  their  natural- 
ness and  naive  simplicity.  All  that  Dr.  Furness 
wrote  on  this  subject  was  an  expansion  of  that 
passage.  The  original  passage  and  the  expansion 
suggest  the  criticism  that  the  natural  selection  of 
a  growing  legend  is  as  simple  and  naive  as  any 
possible  product  of  the  most  unstudied  individual 
narrator. 

The  growth  of  Channing's  mind  can  nowhere  be 
/  traced  more  plainly  than  in  those  parts  of  his  writ- 
ings which  convey  his  views  of  Christianity.  The 
chronological  order  cannot  always  be  made  out,  but, 
in  so  far  as  it  can  be,  it  makes  for  the  impression 
that  while  always  holding  fast  to  the  supernaturalist 
view,  his  emphasis  upon  it  steadily  decreased,  and 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  221 

his  recommendation  of  Christianity  to  his  hearers 
became  steadily  more  rational  and  moral.  ^  While 
there  is  much  scattered  evidence  to  this  effect,  it 
is  heaped  up  conspicuously  in  the  sermons  "  Chris- 
tianity a  Rational  Religion,"  "  The  Great  Purpose 
of  Christianity  "  (1828),  and  two  sermons  on  the 
"  Evidences  of  Christianity,"  which  were  included 
in  the  1832  volume,  while  for  the  climax  of  this 
development  we  cannot  do  better  than  to  read  the 
tenth  and  the  eleventh  sermons  in  "  The  Perfect 
Life,"  which  are  "  The  Essence  of  the  Christian 
Religion  "  and  "  Perfect  Life  the  End  of  Chris- 
tianity." In  "  Christianity  a  Rational  Religion  " 
we  seem  to  have  passed  already  from  the  early 
view  that  the  contents  of  Revelation,  albeit  ra- 
tional, could  not  have  been  attained  by  reason 
without  supernatural  aid.  The  contention  is  that 
"  revelation  is  founded  on  the  authority  of  reason 
and  cannot  therefore  oppose  or  disparage  it  with- 
out subverting  itself."  "  Reason  alone  makes  us 
capable  of  receiving  a  revelation."  "  A  religion 
claiming  to  be  from  God  can  give  no  surer  proof 
of  falsehood  than  contradiction  of  those  previous 
truths  which  God  is  teaching  in  our  very  nature." 
"  Nothing  but  the  approving  sentence  of  reason 
binds  us  to  receive  and  obey  revelation."  He  does 
not  find  revelation  teaching  "  all  things  necessary 
to  salvation ; "  "I  must  not  think  it  the  only 
source  of  instruction  to  which  I  must  repair." 
There  is  here,  he  assures  us,  no  "  pride  of  reason," 
for  pride  finds  its  dehght  in  its  sense  of  superiority ; 


222  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

but  reason  is  "  the  common  property  of  all  human 
beings."  For  "  pride  of  reason  "  we  must  go  to 
men's  "  infatuated  trust  in  their  own  infallibility,'* 
their  "  impatience  of  contradiction,"  their  "  arro- 
gance towards  those  differing  from  them  in  opin- 
ion." The  general  argument  for  the  rationality  of 
Christianity  is  from  its  internal  consistency,  and 
its  consistency  with  other  truths,  and  from  its  uni- 
versality. 

In  the  two  sermons  of  "  Evidences "  the  main 
course  of  the  argument  is  much  the  same  as  in  the 
Dudleian  Lecture,  but  the  change  of  temper  is 
shown  by  a  noble  introductory  passage  in  which 
Channing  contended  for  the  possibility  of  an  un- 
behef  more  excellent  and  honorable  than  the  cur- 
rent orthodoxy  of  the  time.  "  Our  religion  is  at 
this  moment  adopted  and  passionately  defended  by 
vast  multitudes  on  the  ground  of  the  very  same 
pride,  worldliness,  love  of  popularity,  and  blind  de- 
votion to  hereditary  prejudices  which  led  the  Jews 
and  Heathens  to  reject  it  in  the  primitive  age." 
"  To  confess  Jesus  at  the  present  moment  argues 
no  moral  courage.  It  may  even  betray  a  servility 
and  worldliness  of  mind." 

When  I  think  what  Christianity  has  become  in  the 
hands  of  politicians  and  priests,  how  it  has  been  shaped 
into  a  weapon  of  power,  how  it  has  crushed  the  human 
soul  for  ages,  how  it  has  struck  the  intellect  with  palsy 
and  haunted  the  imagination  with  superstitious  phan- 
toms, how  it  has  broken  whole  nations  to  the  yoke,  and 
frowned  on  every  free   thought;    when  I  think  how, 


.    WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  223 

under  almost  every  form  of  this  religion,  its  ministers 
have  taken  it  into  their  own  keeping,  have  hewn  and 
compressed  it  into  the  shape  of  rigid  creeds,  and  have 
then  pursued  by  menaces  of  everlasting  woe  whoever 
should  question  the  divinity  of  these  works  of  their 
hands ;  when  I  consider,  in  a  word,  how,  under  such  in- 
fluences, Christianity  has  been  and  still  is  exhibited,  in 
forms  which  shock  alike  the  reason,  conscience,  and 
heart,  I  feel  deeply,  painfully,  what  a  different  system 
it  is  from  that  which  Jesus  taught,  and  I  dare  not  apply 
to  unbelief  the  terms  of  condemnation  which  belonged 
to  the  infidelity  of  the  primitive  age.^ 

It  may  be  said  here,  very  properly,  that  by  this 
time  such  ''  unbelief  "  as  Channing's  could  be  ex- 
pressed in  Boston  with  as  little  expense  of  courage  as 
the  traditional  belief.  When  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher 
was  brought  to  Boston  in  1826  to  withstand  the 
rising  flood  of  Unitarianism  with  a  form  of  ortho- 
doxy that  was  all  the  more  vehement  because  of 
its  individual  note,  —  an  enterprise  that  met  with 
good  success,  —  his  account  of  the  condition  of 
affairs  was  epitomized  after  this  fashion  :  — 

All  the  literary  men  of  Massachusetts  were  Unita- 
rian ;  all  the  trustees  and  professors  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege w^ere  Unitarian ;  all  the  elite  of  wealth  and  fashion 
crowded  Unitarian  churches ;  the  judges  on  the  bench 
were  Unitarian,  giving  decisions  by  which  the  peculiar 
features  of  church  organization  so  carefully  ordered  by 

1  Sentences  so  long-  as  this  were  frequent  in  Channing-'s  earlier 
writings,  infrequent  in  the  later.  Some  of  the  sermons  in  The 
Perfect  Life  g-o  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  the  effect  is  choppy ; 
partly  from  the  use  of  periods  where  semicolons  had  heen  used 
aforetime. 


224  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

the  Pilgrim   Fathers  had  been  nullified,   and  all  the 
power  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  congregation. 

In  the  Motte  ordination  sermon  of  1828,  we 
have  "  the  great  purpose  of  Christianity  "  declared 
to  be  the  strengthening  and  uplifting  of  the  mind, 
the  elevation  of  the  soul.  We  have  left  far  behind 
the  doctrine  of  the  earlier  sermons  which  put  spe- 
cial emphasis  on  future  happiness.  The  preacher 
deprecates  the  separation  of  Christian  virtue  from 
its  rewards.  Men  "  think  of  being  Christians  for 
the  sake  of  something  beyond  the  Christian  char- 
acter, something  more  precious.  That  the  chief 
reward  lies  in  the  very  spirit  of  religion  they  do 
not  dream."  But  it  is  to  the  tenth  and  eleventh 
sermons  of  "  The  Perfect  Life  "  that  we  must  go 
for  the  ripest  form  of  Channing's  thought  of  Chris- 
tianity. In  the  former  of  these,  "  The  Essence  of 
the  Christian  Religion,"  he  says,  "  I  believe  that 
Christianity  has  one  great  principle  which  is 
central^  around  which  aU  its  truths  gather,  and 
which  constitutes  it  the  Glorious  Gospel  of  the 
Blessed  God :  it  is  the  doctrine  that  God  purposes, 
in  his  unbounded  Fatherly  Love,  to  perfect  the 
HUMAN  SOUL ;  ^  to  purify  it  from  all  sin  ;  to  fiU 
it  with  his  own  spirit ;  to  unfold  it  forever."  No 
word  was  oftener  on  Channing's  lips,  or  in  his 
thought,  than  "  perfection."^  It  was  significant  of 

1  W.  H.  Channing'  is  probably  responsible  for  the  use  of  capitals 
and  small  capitals  in  this  passage.  Channing  was  very  sparing  of 
such  devices,  even  his  pronouns  referring  to  the  Deity  being  with- 
out capitals. 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED     225 

an  idea  that  was  with  him  in  the  early  college  days, 
and,  like 

Divine  Alplieus,  who,  by  secret  sluice, 
Stole  underseas, 

it  reappeared  beyond  the  flood  of  his  Hopkinsian 
time,  and  added  strength  to  strength.  But  what 
he  meant  by  perfection  was  never  something  stati- 
cal ;  it  was  always  something  dynamic,  a  "  career 
of  endless  improvement."  The  thought  of  his 
"  Essence  of  Christianity "  is  reiterated  in  the 
next  sermon,  "  Perfect  Life  the  End  of  Christian- 
ity." He  said,  "  I  affirm  that  Excellence  of  Char- 
acter is  the  Great  Object  of  Christianity ;  is  the 
Great  Blessing  which  Christ  came  to  Communi- 
cate." By  this  standard  he  tried  men,  Jesus,  God. 
Perfect  goodness  is  the  supreme  good,  the  only 
good  for  men.  The  goodness  of  Jesus  is  all  that 
recommends  him  to  our  love.  So  far  as  his  death 
has  any  significance  for  us,  it  is  as  an  example  of 
his  goodness.  The  love  of  God  —  it  is  the  love  of 
goodness ;  it  is  nothing  less  than  this,  and  can  be 
nothing  more.  "  The  adoration  of  goodness  — 
this  is  religion." 

Incidentally  we  have  already  seen  something  of 
the  particular  forms  of  Channing's  supernatural- 
istic  theology,  —  its  doctrine  touchiug  the  Scrip- 
tures (Baltimore  sermon),  Christology  (contro- 
versy of  1815),  and  Atonement  (New  York  sermon 
of  1826^.  It  can  hardly  be  denied  that  Chan- 
ning's method  was,  in  its  intent,  more  scriptural 
than  that  of  his  orthodox  contemporaries.     It  was 


226  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

his  confidence  in  the  sufficiency  of  Scripture  that 
made  him  so  averse  to  "man-made  creeds."  It 
was  its  lack  of  scriptural  confirmation,  for  one 
thing,  that  made  the  Trinitarian  system  so  impos- 
sible for  him.  It  was  his  reverence  for  the  letter 
of  Scripture  that  indisposed  him  for  all  those  alle- 
gorical interpretations,  without  which,  said  Car- 
dinal Newman,  orthodoxy  would  have  no  case  at 
aU.  But  his  distrust  of  such  interpretations  did 
not  import  that  every  superficial  meaning  was  the 
best.  "  Let  me  go  to  the  Bible,"  he  said,  "  dis- 
missing my  reason,  and  taking  the  first  impression 
which  the  words  convey,  and  there  is  no  absurdity, 
however  gross,  into  which  I  may  not  fall."  The 
actual  meaning  was  to  be  sought  in  precisely  the 
same  manner  as  that  of  other  books.  Here  was  a 
fruitful  seed  ;  but  the  soil  in  which  it  grew  afforded 
it  no  proper  nourishment.  Incidentally,  there  was 
much  anticipation  of  the  higher  criticism  of  to-day. 
It  was  with  a  forefeeling  for  Matthew  Arnold's 
"  Literature  and  Dogma "  that  he  wrote,  "  The 
language  of  the  Bible  is  not  that  of  logicians,  nor 
the  language  of  retired  and  inanimate  speculation, 
but  of  affection,  of  zeal,  of  men  who  burned  to 
convey  deep  and  vivid  impressions  of  truth."  With 
much  appearance  of  difference  and  contradiction, 
how  was  the  essential  teaching  of  the  Bible  to  be 
found  ?  "  Nothing  is  plainer  than  that  I  must 
compare  passage  with  passage,  and  limit  one  by 
another,  and  especially  limit  all  by  those  plain  and 
universal  principles  of   reason   which   are   called 


WHAT  CHAINING   PREACHED  227 

common  sense."  The  vice  of  this  method  was, 
that  it  imposed  common  setise  on  every  biblical 
writer,  —  a  rule  of  thumb  for  agonies  and  exalta- 
tions of  the  spirit,  and  that,  with  as  little  scientific 
warrant,  it  assumed  the  unity  of  the  Bible,  argu- 
ing from  part  to  part  as  if  it  were  all  the  work  of 
one  man,  the  expression  of  one  mind,  whereas,  it 
is,  in  fact,  the  free  and  independent  expression  of 
a  hundred  or  more  different  minds,  subject  to  the 
social  influences  of  a  thousand  various  years  and  to 
the  special  stress  of  each  separate  writer's  individ- 
^*T?  uality.  What  his  exegesis  —  the  interpretation  of 
-^     the  obscure  and   the  inferior  by  the  simplest  and 

/  .  the  best  —  actually  came  to  was  his  transfigura- 
tion of  the  given  form  in  the  light  of  his  own 
extraordinarily  un-"  common-sense,"    his  personal 

Cajd    conviction  of  what  was  just  and  right.     So  much 
of  the  Bible  was  inspired  as  appealed  to  his  moral 
and   religious    sensibility.     The    woes    denounced  /^<=^/f  ^z?*/ 
upon  the  Pharisees  were  swallowed  up  in  the  Beati-  ^  i 
tudes.     He  read  the  former  so  tenderly  that  an  ri^c?: 

objector  said,  "If  Jesus  spoke  them  in  that  way, 
they  are  all  right."  But  did  Jesus  speak  them  in 
that  way  ?  Did  he  mean,  "  Alas  for  you  Scribes 
and  Pharisees !  "  ?  I  doubt  it  very  much.  Jesus 
was  not  exactly  another  Channing,  wi'it  however 
large.  And  Channing's  method  with  the  Scrip- 
tures was  at  once  an  enhancement  of  their  inferior 
parts  and  a  deduction  from  their  infinite  reality, 
richness,  and  variety.  He  went  to  them  too  much 
as  one  seeing  his  natural  face  in_a  glass. 


228  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

It  should  be  noted,  by  the  way,  that  the  unity 
of  the  Bible  was  for  Channing  practically  a  New 
Testament  unity.  Formally  he  considered  "the 
Christian  dispensation  a  continuation  of  the  Jew- 
ish," but  his  emphasis  anticipated  the  reminder  of 
one  of  his  later  sermons  that  when  he  speaks  of 
Revelation  he  means  the  Christian  religion.  Here 
he  had  something  of  the  narrowness  which  was 
much  more  markedly  characteristic  of  Andrews 
Norton,  whose  opinion  of  the  Old  Testament  was 
lacking  in  due  respect.  Channing  was  emphati- 
cally a  man  of  the  New  Testament.  His  texts  were 
drawn  from  it  almost  exclusively.  Much  less  his 
arguments.  His  appeals  to  its  authority,  except  in 
a  very  large  and  general  way,  were  few  and  far  be- 
tween. His  sermons  were  developments  of  his  own 
broadening  thought,  not  attenuations  of  Bible 
texts.  These  were  points  of  departure,  not  anchors 
to  be  dragged  astern,  when  every  sail  was  bellying 
■  with  the  wind.  He  theorized  very  little  on  the 
"""  "  subject  of  inspiration,  but  that  plenary,  not  verbal, 
inspiration  was  his  working  hypothesis,  there  can 
,^  be  no  doubt.     The  Bible,  and  especially  the  New 

Testament,  contained  rather  than  was  a  revela- 
tion. The  tendency  was  to  the  now  familiar  strain 
of  liberal  orthodoxy,  the  Bible  the  natural  record 
of  a  supernatural  revelation ;  and  to  that  other, 
the  substance  of  the  revelation  the  personality  of 
Jesus  rather  than  anything  he  taught :  "Chris- 
tianity is  Christ." 
,     In  no  respect  did  Channing  withstand  the  ortho- 


WHAT  CHANNING   PREACHED  229 

doxy  of  his  time  more  sharply,  because  it  ought, 
according  to  his  judgment,  to  be  blamed,  than  in 
the  matter  of  its  determination  to  convert  what 
was  most  fluid  and  intangible  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament into  the  hardest  dogmas,  to  reject  which  por- 
tended moral  ruin  and  eternal  hell.     And  where 
he  deprecated  overconfidence,  he  was  not  himself 
at  fault.     He   never   dogmatized   concerning   the 
nature  and  rank  of  Jesus,  because  the  New  Testa- 
ment had  for  him  on  these  points  no  sure  word  of 
prophecy.     What  he  felt  sure  of  was  that  it  did 
not  declare  his  deity,  nor  his  double  nature,  and 
his  rejection  of  these  doctrines^  was  absolute  and 
without  shadow  of  turning.  ,  It  was  different  with 
Christ's  preexistence.     He  inclined  to  this  till  he 
drew  near  the  end  of  his  life,  but  with  slackening 
conviction  of  its  certain  truth.    He  recognized  that 
vagueness  of  the  New  Testament  which  presented 
so  many  difaculties  to  those  who  received  the  New 
Testament  as  a  theological  unit,  which  presents  so 
few  to  those  who,  from  the  diversity  of  its  author- 
ship, expect  variety  of  thought.     Lately  we  have 
had  Professor  Gilbert  confirming  the  view  of  Mr. 
Norton  that  the  New  Testament  Christ  is  not  a 
preexistent  being,  but  there  were  texts  which  might 
well  arrest  Channing  for  a  time  on  this  line  of  ad- 
vance.    We  have  heard  a  thousand  times  that  he 
was  an  Arian  in  his  Christology,  but  the  proverb 
which  declares  labels  to  be  libels  has  here  a  vivid 

1  He  contended  that  a  revelation  would  not  leave  such  doc- 
trines to  doubtful  inference  and  interpretation,  if  they  were 
true. 


230  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

illustration.  What  is  certain  is  that  the  Socmian 
doctrine,  as  presented  by  Priestley  and  Belsham, 
did  not  attract  him,  but  his  Christ  was  far  too 
human  to  represent  the  Arian  conception  in  an 
exhaustive  manner.  He  was  no  careful  student  of 
patristic  theologians.  If  he  had  read  Newman's 
"  Arians  of  the  Fourth  Century,"  when  it  appeared 
in  1838,  he  would  probably  have  found  how  little 
of  an  Arian  he  was.  For  Arianism  had  far  less 
scope  for  that  human  side  of  Jesus  which  was  so 
inexpressibly  dear  to  Channing  than  had  the  Atha- 
nasian  doctrine.  I  find  no  evidence  that  he  ever 
entered  sympathetically  into  the  merits  of  the  gTeat 
Arian  controversy  ;  that  he  ever  appreciated  the 
fact  that  Arians  and  Athanasians  were  striving  by 
different  paths  for  the  same  goal  —  escape  from  a 
polytheistic  ditheism  —  and  that  Athanasius  took 
the  better  way.  But  Channing's  final  escape  from 
Arianism  was  not  by  way  of  Athanasianism,  any 
more  than  by  way  of  Socinianism.  It  was  by  way 
I  of  a  humanitarianism  much  less  mechanical  and 
artificial  than  that  of  the  Socinian  scheme.  This 
last  was  made  impossible  for  him  by  the  increasing 
sympathy  of  his  thought  with  the  various  Tran- 
scendentalism of  his  later  years.  We  have  the  tes- 
timony of  his  son,  carefuUy  transmitted  to  Colonel 
Higginson  and  Dr.  Bellows,  that  he  said  (1841), 
"  I  am  more  and  more  inclined  to  believe  in  the 
simple  humanity  of  Jesus." ,  If  he  did  not  openly 
so  preach,  it  was  from  no  dictation  of  an  esoteric 
policy,  but  because  he  preached  nothing  of  which 


WHAT  CHANNING   PREACHED  231 

lie  had  not  assurance  doubly  sure ;  also  because 
the  main  effect  of  Jesus  for  his  mind  —  his  moral 
influence  —  was  independent  of  any  theory  of  his 
personality. 

All  this  is  quite  apart  from  the  object  of  this 
chapter,  to  set  forth  "  What  Channing  preached." 
He  did  not  preach  an  Arian  Christology.  Infre- 
quently there  was  some  cold  and  formal  reference 
to  it,  but  what  he  warmed  to  was  the  example  and 
the  inspiration  of  Christ's  moral  character.  Here 
was  that  emphasis  by  which  he  must  be  judged. 
Long  before  there  was  any  conscious  deliverance 
from  the  Arian  bonds,  the  body  of  his  preaching 
went  forth  with  a  glad  rush  of  enthusiasm  upon 
lines  that  had  no  congruity  with  the  Arian  con- 
ception of  Christ  as  a  being  so  nearly  of  an  age 
with  God  that  Arius  would  not  say,  "  There  was 
a  time  when  he  was  not,"  but  only  "  There  was 
when  he  was  not ; "  who  was  the  creator  of  all 
worlds,  and  all  men's  judge  in  the  last  great  assize. 
Take  all  the  published  sermons  which  express  his 
thought  and  feeling  for  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and, 
with  these,  all  the  corresponding  matter  in  the 
"  Memoir,"  "  Note-Book,"  and  elsewhere,  and, 
from  end  to  end,  the  emphasis  is  on  the  moral  ex- 
cellence of  Jesus,  and  on  love  of  that  as  the  only 
love  of  him  deserving  of  the  name.  The  sermon 
called  "  The  Character  of  Christ "  is  quite  certainly 
the  earliest  of  those  sermons  dealing  specifically 
with  Jesus.  Nowhere  else  is  he  exalted  with  so 
much  rhetorical  effusion.    It  is  a  far  cry  from  this 


232  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

separation  of  him  from  humanity  to  that  sermon 
of  January  5,  1840,  which  Dr.  Gannett  thought 
"suited  to  do  more  harm  than  good,"  because 
"  even  the  character  of  Christ  and  the  character  of 
God,"  Dr.  Channing  thought,  '••  were  excellent  and 
glorious  rather  for  what  they  had  in  common  with 
other  good  beings  than  for  any  attribute  which  they 
alone  possessed."  Yet  even  in  the  earlier  sermon 
it  was  the  character  of  Christ  that  was  the  top 
and  crown  of  his  sublimity.  Without  abating  any- 
thing from  this  exaltation,  he  preached,  some  time 
before  its  publication  in  1832,  a  sermon  on  "  The 
Imitableness  of  Christ's  character."  He  still  said 
of  Jesus,  "  I  believe  him  to  be  more  than  a  human 
being ;  separated  by  a  broad  distinction  from  other 
men."  Yet  the  difference  was  not  an  Arian  dif- 
ference. It  was  a  difference  of  degTce  and  not 
of  kind.  Indeed  the  difference  of  man  from  God 
also  was  one  of  degree.  It  is  in  this  sermon  that 
we  have  (in  one  of  many  places)  that  affirmation 
so  dear  to  Channing's  heart,  "  All  minds  are  of 
one  family  ...  of  one  origin,  one  nature,  kindled 
from  one  divine  flame.  .  .  .  This  greatest  of  all 
truths  lies  at  the  foundation  of  all  religion  and  all 
hope.  ...  It  mingles  unperceived  with  all  our 
worship  of  God,  which  uniformly  takes  for  granted 
that  he  is  a  Mind  having  thought,  affection,  voli- 
tion like  ourselves.  .  .  .  When  I  feel  that  all 
minds  form  one  family,  that  I  have  the  same  na- 
ture with  Jesus,  and  that  he  came  to  communicate 
to  me  his  own  mind,  to  bring  me  into  communion 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  233 

with  what  was  sublimest,  purest,  happiest  in  him- 
self, then  I  can  love  him  as  I  love  no  other  being, 
excepting  him  only  who  is  the  Father  alike  of 
Christ  and  of  the  Christian."  All  this  is  as  far  as 
possible  from  the  Arian  type  of  thought,  to  which 
Christ  was  a  being  sui  generis.  The  imitableness 
of  such  a  being  could  not  reasonably  be  maintained. 
When  Channing  invited  men  to  the  conviction  that 
they  might  become  "  one  with  Jesus  in  thought, 
in  feehng,  in  power,  in  holiness,"  —  "his  subhm- 
est  virtues  may  be  yours,"  —  he  had  joined  him- 
self unconsciously  to  those  whose  confidence  is  in 
the  pure  humanity  of  Jesus  ;  he  was  realizing  the 
logical  significance  of  his  "one  sublime  idea,"  "the 
greatness  of  the  soul." 

If  the  two  noble  sermons  on  "  Love  to  Christ," 
do  not  carry  us  farther,  they  reinforce  with  fresh 
illustrations  the  teaching  already  indicated.  As 
well  go,  he  said,  to  the  genealogy  of  a  saint  or 
hero  for  a  knowledge  of  his  character  as  to  theories 
of  Christ's  nature  for  any  real  knowledge  of  him. 
"  Christians  have  yet  to  learn  that  inspiration  and 
miracles  and  outward  dignities  are  nothing  com- 
pared with  the  soul."  Love  to  Christ  is  love  of 
his  character,  of  "  that  divine  philanthropy  which 
made  him  the  Son  of  God."  In  the  second  of  these 
sermons  he  contrasts  the  sufferings  of  Jesus  on  the 
cross  with  his  character  as  a  means  of  exciting 
our  affection;  not  his  sufferings,  but  the  great- 
ness of  the  spirit  in  which  he  suffered,  the  one 
thing   above   all.      The    sermon    upon   Jesus   as 


234  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

"  Brother,  Friend,  and  Saviour,"  in  "  The  Perfect 
Life,"  was  probably  one  of  the  later  of  those 
which  he  devoted  to  a  theme  of  which  he  never 
tired.  He  refers  to  the  preexistence  of  Christ  as  "  a 
doctrine  supported  apparently  by  the  letter  of 
various  texts,"  but  what  delights  him  is  that  he 
came  to  earth  trailing  no  clouds  of  a  preexistent 
glory.  "  Jesus  by  his  birth  was  truly  a  human 
being,  and  in  this  we  should  rejoice."  "  Thus  he 
was  one  of  us.  He  was  a  Man.  I  see  in  him  a 
Brother  and  a  Friend.  1  feel  the  reality  of  that 
large  loving  human  sympathy  which  so  gloriously 
distinguished  his  whole  character  and  life."  There 
is  no  taint  of  Arianism  here.  He  conceives  that 
"  his  miracles  were  studiously  performed  in  the 
most  unostentatious  way."  They  must  not  be  per- 
mitted to  blind  men  to  his  real  worth,  and  this  con- 
sisted in  his  character.  "  The  great  impulse  which 
lis  to  carry  forward  the  human  race  is  the  CHAR- 
IJACTER  of  Jesus,  understood  ever  more  clearly,  ever 
jmore  deeply  felt."  He  was  the  Emancipator  of 
the  intellect  and  conscience ;  the  Liberator  of  a 
boundless  hope. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Channing's  views 
of  Jesus  and  of  Christianity  were  confined  to  the 
few  sermons  dealing  with  these  subjects  exclu- 
sively. We  come  upon  them,  take  what  road  we 
will.  The  preacher  who  fears  to  repeat  himself 
can  go  to  Channing  for  an  habitual  justification  of 
the  fault,  if  such  it  is.  His  "  one  sublime  idea  " 
and  its  glorious  companions  were  constantly  reap- 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  235 

pearing  in  his  sermons,  his  letters,  and  his  talk. 
He  might  set  out  with  one  or  the  other,  and  soon 
or  late  all  his  great  ideas,  "  like  gods,  talking  all 
around  Olympus,"  would  be  about  him  in  full  choir. 
Like  all  minds,  as  he  conceived  them,  they  were 
of  one  family,  and  they  dwelt  together  in  unity. 
One  of  the  most  radiant  was  "  The  Character  of 
Jesus,"  his  peculiar  glory ;  another  was,  "  Love  of 
that  Character  the  true  Love  to  Christ ;  "  a  third, 
"  The  Character  of  Jesus  the  heart  of  Christian- 
ity," at  once  its  source  and  end.  Sometimes  these 
seemed  to  overtop  the  other  great  ideas,  the  dignity 
of  human  nature,  spiritual  freedom,  the  kinship  of 
all  minds,  the  Fatherhood  of  God.  Again,  this 
order  was  reversed.  The  fact  is  that  the  idea  on 
which  Channing  gazed,  for  the  time  being,  most 
intently,  loomed  for  him  into  preeminence.  But 
through  the  veil  of  this  illusion  we  glimpse  a  cul- 
minating point. 

An  important  part  of  Channing's  view  of  Christ 
and  Christianity  was  his  view  of  the  atonement. 
This  doctrine  bulked  so  huge  across  his  path,  at 
that  time  when  he  was  working  through  the  tangle 
of  the  traditional  theology,  that  he  tried  to  make 
some  terms  with  it,  conceding  some  mysterious 
efficacy  in  the  death  of  Jesus  as  affecting  the  re- 
demption of  mankind  from  sin  to  holiness  and 
heaven.  But  the  use  of  mystery  by  the  orthodox 
as  a  postern  by  which  to  escape  from  those  who 
had  fairly  gained  possession  of  their  citadel  on 
the  rational  side,  made  resort  to  it  soon  distasteful 


236  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

to  Channing,  and  then  quite  impossible.  Words 
spoken  with  the  understanding  wholly  displaced  in 
his  affection  those  spoken  in  an  unknown  tongue. 
He  became  passionately  enamored  of  "  the  simpli- 
city of  Christ."  It  was  of  the  essence  of  a  revela- 
tion that  it  should  be  intelligible.  To  be  so  was 
its  final  cause.  If  there  were  mysterious  aspects 
of  Christ's  nature  or  of  his  death,  in  so  far  as  they 
could  not  be  appropriated  by  the  intellect,  they 
were  without  significance  for  the  conscience  and 
the  heart.^  I  do  not  recall,  and  have  not  been 
able  to  find  in  Channing's  writings,  public  or  per- 
sonal, any  approximation  to  the  idea  that  the  pur- 
pose of  the  atonement  was  to  reconcile  God  to 
man.  He  habitually  reversed  this  proposition. 
With  equal  energy  he  rejected  the  doctrine  of 
Christ's  "  infinite  satisfaction  ;  "  jpar  excellence^  in 
the  Baltimore  and  New  York  sermons.  There  was 
a  growing  disposition  to  deprecate  the  rhetorical 
exhibition  of  the  sufferings  of  Jesus,  a  tendency  to 
find  their  ultimate  significance  in  their  illustration 
of  his  self-sacrificing  spirit.  That  "  mysterious 
agency  "  of  the  Cross,  which  he  had  not  willingly 
let   go,  he  at  length  repudiated  as   "  our   peril, 

1  In  Channing's  later  sermons  one  finds  a  lofty  satisfaction  in 
the  sentiment  of  mystery.  But  here  "was  no  reversion  to  the 
orthodox  infusion  of  an  element  of  mystery  into  difficulties  which 
it  could  not  resolve,  though  in  the  main  they  were  of  its  own 
creation.  Channing's  adorable  mystery  was  that  *'  mystery  be- 
hind every  act  and  appearance  "  into  which  all  special  mysteries 
are  merged  in  the  progressive  experience  of  mankind.  Cf-  Her- 
bert Spencer's  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  310. 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  237 

which  may  become  our  ruin."  "  I  cannot  receive 
from  the  Cross  of  Christ  any  good  so  great  as  that 
sublime  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  of  love  to  God,  and 
of  unbounded  charity,  which  the  Cross  so  glori- 
ously manifested."  His  later  preaching  of  "  Christ 
and  him  crucified  "  was  with  fond  reiteration,  but 
wholly  of  this  kind.  Here  was  a  "  moral  view  of 
the  atonement "  which  had  much  in  common  with 
Bushnell's  first  volume  on  this  subject,  little  with 
his  second.  Bushnell's  method  was  subtle  (not 
merely  subtile)  to  a  degree  to  which  Channing's 
bald  simplicity  made  no  approximation,  so  that 
even  in  his  first  volume  the  subject  is  considered 
much  more  curiously  than  at  any  time  by  Chan- 
ning.  It  was  in  the  second  volume  that  Bushnell 
expounded  his  idea  of  God's  passibility.^  To  Chan- 
ning  the  idea  of  a  suffering  God  was  a  monstrosity. 
As  logically  implied  in  the  doctrine  of  "Christ's 
infinite  atonement,"  it  was  that  doctrine's  grand 
defect.  Its  pantheistic  character  did  not  com- 
mend it  to  him,  seeing  that  his  Christian  deism 
was  utterly  averse  to  pantheism.  But  it  is  strange 
that  those  of  our  own  time  who  rationalize  the  vicari- 
ous suffering  of  Jesus,  as  a  symbol  of  that  vicarious 
suffering  in  which  the  world  abounds  from  the 
ascidian  to  the  saint,  can  find  in  Channing  no 
anticipation  of  their  thought.  It  is,  perhaps,  as 
well  that  they  cannot,  seeing  that  the  original  doc- 
trine intended  no  such  symbol,  was  not  feeling 
after  any  such,  and  is  not  entitled  to  be  regarded 

^  See  Hunger's  Horace  Bushnell,  pp.  235-273. 


238  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

as  productive  of  a  pathetic  truth  with  which  it 
had  no  genetic  relation  whatsoever.^ 

There  is  something  arbitrary  in  my  attempt  to 
separate  Channing's  larger  and  more  personal 
opinions  from  those  which  he  held  more  or  less  in 
common  with  the  liberal  supernaturahsts  of  his 
time,  because  we  do  not  find  the  latter  in  disjunc- 
tion with  the  former,  but  associated  with  them  on 
the  most  intimate  terms,  construed  in  sympathy 
with  them,  and  taking  up  into  their  structure 
much  of  the  substance  of  the  more  characteristic 
thought.^     But  there  are  aspects  of   his  thought 

^  The  symbolism  of  the  traditional  dogmas  is  much  over- 
worked. Symbols  should  not  be  denials  or  destructive  limita- 
tions of  the  truths  they  symbolize.  "  One  in  three  "  is  no  kind 
of  a  symbol  of  the  One  in  all ;  it  is  a  denial  of  the  One  in  all. 
So  "  God  incarnate  in  Christ  "  is  a  denial  of  God  incarnate  in 
humanity,  and  "  Revelation  "  is  a  denial  of  universal  inspiration. 
Carefully  considered,  the  old  forms.  Original  Sin,  Election,  Total 
Depravity,  are  found  to  be  entirely  lacking  in  any  symbolical 
intimation  of  the  new  doctrines  of  Heredity,  Environment,  and 
so  on.  Moreover,  the  perpetuated  symbol  is  a  perpetual  menace 
to  the  larger  thought  it  is  supposed  to  shadow  forth.  See  Har- 
nack.  What  is  Christianity  ?  p.  188 :  "  How  often  and  often  in 
the  history  of  religion  has  there  been  a  tendency  to  do  away 
with  some  traditional  form  of  doctrine  or  ritual  which  has  ceased 
to  satisfy  inwardly,  but  to  do  away  with  it  by  giving  it  a  new 
interpretation.  The  endeavor  seems  to  be  succeeding  ;  the  temper 
and  the  knowledge  prevailing  at  the  moment  are  favorable  to  it 
—  when,  lo  and  behold  !  the  old  meaning  suddenly  comes  back 
again.  The  actual  words  of  the  ritual,  of  the  liturgy,  of  the 
official  doctrine,  prove  stronger  than  anything  else." 

^  For  an  anthology  of  this  which  is  wonderfully  rich  and  full, 
see  W.  C.  Gannett's  and  Judson  Fisher's  Selected  Passages,  pub- 
lished by  the  Western  Unitarian  Conference.  I  could  wish  that  it 
might  be  read  in  connection  with  this  chapter.  At  almost  every 
point  I  have  found  it  anticipating  my  own  selections.  But  though 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  239 

concerning  religion,  human  nature,  intellectual  lib- 
erty, a  future  life,  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  which 
have  not  come  fairly  into  view  in  my  exposition 
heretofore.  I  now  turn  to  these,  reserving  for  the 
two  chapters  following  an  account  of  his  thought 
and  action  on  social  and  reformatory  lines. 

In  the  most  central  things  "  the  voice  obeyed 
at  eve  "  was  for  him,  as  for  Emerson,  the  voice 
"  obeyed  at  prime,"  while  incidentally  there  were 
survivals  in  his  earlier  of  his  earliest  thought,  and, 
to  the  end,  surprising  incongruities,  trivial  con- 
ceptions neighboring  with  the  most  elevated,  as 
where  the  Old  Testament  theophanies  as  little 
troubled  him  as  they  did  George  Herbert  when  he 
sang :  — 

One  mig-lit  have  sought  and  found  Thee  presently 
At  some  fair  oak,  or  bush,  or  cave,  or  well : 

"  Is  my  God  this  way  ?  "    "  No,"  they  woidd  reply, 
"  He  is  to  Sinai  gone,  as  we  heard  tell." 

In  the  earher  sermons  the  idea  of  a  heavenly  re- 
ward for  this  world's  righteousness  lagged  super- 
fluous on  the  stage,  which  was  already  being  crowded 
with  a  company  of  larger  mould.  As  early  as  1805, 
we  find  him  saying,  "  True  religion  is  not  to  be 
measured  by  subservience  to  a  farther  end ;  but  it 
is  the  end  of  ends  in  itself.  .  .  .  Religion  is  the 
rectification  of  the  soul ;  it  is  inward  health.  .  .  . 

Channing  shows  much  better  in  passages  than  in  sentences,  even 
the  passages  are  much  more  impressive  in  their  proper  setting 
than  taken  disconnectedly,  cr  classified  in  the  manner  of  the 
Gannett-Judson  anthology. 


240  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

It  consists  of  feelings  and  dispositions  which  in- 
clude everything  generous,  disinterested,  sympa- 
thetic, and  pure."  Very  soon  we  have,  in  one  form 
or  another,  religion  identified  with  moral  idealism 
seeking  its  image  and  its  inspiration  in  a  divine 
personality.  "  What  is  there  that  gives  such  dig- 
nity to  our  nature  as  the  capacity  for  knowing  and 
loving  the  best  of  beings  ?  "  Already  in  1816  we 
find  the  thought  which  reached  its  climax  in  the 
sermon  "  Likeness  to  God,"  which  was  preached 
at  Dr.  Farley's  ordination  in  1828,  and  was  then 
denounced  as  "  blasphemy  "  by  the  orthodox  party, 
—  by  a  part  of  it,  to  speak  more  exactly.  With 
Channing,  no  more  than  with  Parker,  was  piety 
something  quite  apart  from  morality,  something 
exclusively  concerned  with  God.  Indeed  Chan- 
ning's  resolution  of  piety  into  morality  was  more 
absolute  than  Parker's.  "  Religion,"  he  said,  "  is 
a  high  degree  of  delight  in  all  the  perfections  of 
God,  —  in  his  wisdom,  his  rectitude,  his  benevo- 
lence ;  and  what  is  the  most  acceptable  expression 
of  this  veneration  ?  "  He  answered  that  it  was 
imitation  of  the  perfections  of  God,  his  justice,  his 
benevolence. 

Benevolence  and  righteousness  are  the  attributes  on 
which  Piety  chiefly  rests  as  its  object  and  by  commu- 
nion with  which  it  acts  and  grows.  But  are  they  not 
the  very  qualities  which  we  mean  by  Morality  ?  What 
is  morality  but  the  exercise  of  a  benevolent  and  just 
temper  towards  all  beings  within  our  knowledge  and 
influence  ?     If  so,  what  is  God's  character  but  Perfect 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  241 

Morality  ?  —  what  but  the  very  dispositions,  in  their 
fulness,  which  conscience  enjoins  upon  every  man,  and 
which  form  what  we  call  rectitude.  To  love  God,  then, 
is  to  love  morality  in  its  most  perfect  form  ;  and  thus 
we  see  how  religion  and  morality  pass  into  each  other 
and  become  one.  The  love  of  God  is  but  another  name 
for  the  love  of  essential  benevolence  and  justice.  .  .  . 
Religion  is  the  perfection  of  morality.^ 

So  far  was  Channing  from  regarding  religion  as 
an  exotic  supernaturally  planted  in  the  soul  that  he 
regarded  it  as  the  soul's  most  natural  and  charac- 
teristic trait. 

What  is  religion  ?  not  a  foreign  inhabitant,  not  some- 
thing alien  to  our  nature,  which  comes  and  takes  up  its 
abode  in  the  soul.  It  is  the  soul  itself,  lifting  itself  up 
to  its  Maker.  What  is  virtue  ?  It  is  the  soul  listening 
to,  and  revering,  and  obeying  a  law  which  belongs  to  its 
very  essence  —  the  law  of  duty  .  .  .  We  hear  men  de- 
crying human  nature,  and  in  the  same  breath  exalting 
religion :  as  if  religion  were  anything  but  human  nature 
acting  in  obedience  to  its  chief  law  !  Religion  and  virtue, 
so  far  as  we  possess  them,  are  ourselves  ;  and  the  homage 
which  is  paid  to  these  attributes  is  in  truth  a  tribute  to 
the  soul  of  man. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  and  important  as- 
pects of  Channing's  conception  of  religion  is  his 
insistence  that  "  it  is  not  an  exclusive  principle." 
He  knew  nothing  of  religion  as  a  "  faculty,"  being 
in  this  respect  a  step  in  advance  of  Theodore  Par- 

^  It  is  not  a  far  cry  from  these  constructions  to  that  of  W.  C. 
Gannett,  familiar  to  many  Unitarians,  ' '  Morality  thought  out  is 
religious  thought,  felt  out  is  religious  feeling,  lived  out  is  religious 
life." 


242  WILLIAM   ELLERY   CHANNING 

ker.  "  The  Keligious  Principle  in  Human  Nature 
is  the  desire  to  establish  relations  with  a  Being 
more  perfect  than  itself."  As  such,  "  it  is  not  an 
exclusive  impulse.  It  does  not  grow  from  an  emo- 
tion that  is  centred  wholly  upon  God  and  seeks 
no  other  object.  .  .  .  All  the  great  principles  of 
human  nature  are  germs  of  religion,  impulses  to- 
wards God."  Seeking  for  anything  better  of  any 
kind,  men  are  feeling  after  God  if  haply  they  may 
find  him.  The  intellect,  the  heart,  the  love  of 
beauty,  seeking  their  appropriate  ends,  are  seeking 
God,  and  have  no  rest  till  they  find  rest  in  him. 
The  first  sermon  in  "  The  Perfect  Life  "  emphasizes 
this  doctrine ;  the  second  gives  us  Channing's  doc- 
trine of  the  larger  revelation.  "  He  who  studies 
nothing  but  the  Bible  does  not  study  even  that 
book  aright.  Rightly  read,  it  would  send  him  back 
to  every  creature  that  God  hath  made  and  to  every 
event  wherein  God  is  acting."  Such  was  the 
supremacy  of  ethics  in  Channing's  mind  that  it  en- 
dured no  brother  near  the  throne,  and  the  cosmic 
part  of  his  theology  is  comparatively  small.  It  has 
unusual  prominence  in  this  sermon.  Here  grows 
the  flower  which  has  been  so  often  plucked  from 
Tennyson's  crannied  wall ;  — 

Behold  the  humblest  wild  flower.  To  produce  that 
weed  all  nature  has  conspired.  Into  itself  it  receives  the 
influence  of  all  the  elements  — light,  heat,  and  air.  Sun, 
earth,  and  ocean  meet  to  pay  it  tribute.  The  least  thing 
in  nature  acts  upon  all  things  and  is  acted  on  by  all ;  so 
that  each  implies  and  is  represented  in  all.     In  a  word, 


WHAT  CHANNING  PKEACHED  243 

to  understand  the  simplest  work  of  God,  the  universe 
must  be  comprehended. 

It  is  in  this  same  sermon  that  the  great  mystery 
of  life  appeals  to  him,  a  mystery  so  much  vaster 
and  better  than  that  which  men,  dog-like,  had 
hidden  away  in  irrational  dogmas  and  then  un- 
buried  with  frantic  simulation  of  an  astonishing 
discovery. 

Look  at  a  grain  of  wheat !  That  seed  is  the  fruit  of 
all  harvests,  of  aU  ages,  since  the  creation  of  the  world. 
It  carries  us  back  to  the  hour  when  the  morning  stars 
sang  for  joy  over  the  new-born  earth.  In  it  are  centred 
the  combined  forces  of  suns  and  rains,  of  soils  and  cli- 
mates, for  a  period  of  which  history  has  no  record.  And 
again  this  tiny  seed  has  within  it  prolific  energy  to  cover 
whole  kingdoms,  and  it  may  be  the  whole  globe.  Such 
mysteries  open  a  deeper  mystery  stiU,  —  Life,  that  awful 
power,  so  endlessly  various  in  the  forms  it  assumes,  — 
Life  that  fills  earth,  air,  and  sea,  with  motion,  growth, 
activity,  and  joy!  .  .  .  What  sight  can  discern,  what 
thought  explore  its  mystery  ? 

From  "  the  infinite  veiled  in  the  lowliest  crea- 
tions," he  turns  to  the  immensity  which  it  informs 
and  overfiUs.  *'  An  infinite  universe  is  each  mo- 
ment opened  to  our  view.  What  blessedness  it 
is  to  dwell  amidst  this  transparent  air,  which  the 
eye  can  pierce  without  limit,  amidst  these  floods  of 
pure,  soft,  cheering  light,  under  this  immeasura- 
ble arch  of  heaven,  and  in  sight  of  these  countless 
stars !  "  But  there  is  a  revelation  of  more  penetra- 
tive force.     It  is  that  of  the  Principle  of  Right  re- 


244  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

vealed  in  every  human  soul.  Here  Channing's  moral 
idealism  took  a  daring  flight,  so  daring  that  Dr. 
Gannett,  listening  to  his  senior  colleague's  sermon, 
again  made  grave  demur,  writing  in  his  journal, 
"  I  did  not  like  the  sermon.  It  seemed  to  be  based 
on  the  unsound  philosophy  that  morality  is,  in 
theory  at  least,  superior  to  the  divine  will,  instead 
of  being,  as  it  is,  nothing  but  an  expression  of  this 
will."  What  Channing  said  was,  "  Do  you  not 
recognize  that  a  law  of  right  is  promulgated  within 
you,  to  which  all  men  are  subject  ?  Still  more,  do 
you  not  feel  that  this  great  law  of  right  binds  not 
only  men,  but  all  intelligent  beings ;  that  it  is  the 
law,  not  of  the  earth  only,  but  of  the  universe  ?  "  ^ 
From  Channing's  more  general  religious  princi- 
ples, I  pass  to  those  views  of  human  nature  which 
have  been  very  properly  regarded  as  being  more 
significant  than  any  other  parts  of  his  preaching.  In 
generous  appreciation  of  these  views,  liberal  ortho- 
doxy has  of  late  outdone  the  Unitarians,  to  whom 
these  are,  perhaps  too  much,  the  unregarded  air 
by  which  they  live.  Everything  else  in  Channing's 
thought  and  work  was  inference  from,  and  applica- 
tion of,  these  views.  They  constituted  his  impas- 
sioned faith  in  man's  intellectual  being,  and  his 
jealousy  for  its  dignities  and  rights.  They  were 
fundamental  to  his  interest  in  every  great  reform  : 
it  was  because  of   man's  exalted  nature   that  he 

^  This  sermon  does  not  seem  to  have  the  ending  which  Dr.  Gan- 
nett praised,  but  the  thought  which  he  deprecated  was  precisely 
that  indicated. 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  245 

must  not  be  enslaved ;  must  not  be  licentious  or 
intemperate ;  must  not  be  crushed  by  legal  penal- 
ties ;  must  be  educated  to  all  noble  use  and  aim. 
They  were  equally  fundamental  to  his  conceptions 
of  the  infinite  Father,  whose  nature  differed  in  de- 
gree only  intellectually  and  morally  from  that  of 
man.  That  "  humanity  of  God,"  for  which  many 
Christian  agnostics  have  had  recourse  to  Jesus, 
Channing  found  in  God  the  Father,  in  virtue  of 
his  simple  Fatherhood.  There  was  a  correlation 
of  energy  among  all  of  Channing' s  leading  thoughts, 
an  easy  transformation  of  them  each  into  the  other, 
but  it  was  into  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  the 
greatness  of  the  soul,  that  they  were  all  most  easily 
resolved.  Here  was  no  "  exiguous  homogene- 
ity," —  nevertheless,  homogeneity.  If  we  go  to 
Channing  for  variety  of  thought,  we  shall  come 
away  sorrowful  in  proportion  to  the  greatness  of 
our  expectations.  But  in  its  homogeneity,  its  ab- 
sorbent unity,  there  was  the  simplicity  and  the 
intensiveness  of  the  man  who  does  one  thing;  or, 
if  many  things,  all  in  one  spirit. 

The  pervasiveness  of  Channing's  one  "  sublime 
idea  "  prepares  us  to  be  disappointed  when  we  in- 
quire for  the  particular  sermons  in  which  it  finds 
distinct  and  separate  expression.  Such  are  hard 
to  find.  One,  "Honor  all  Men,"  raises  our  hopes, 
but  proves,  though  very  noble,  to  be  less  significant 
for  our  immediate  purpose  than  some  others,  whose 
direct  concern  is  with  a  less  promising  subject.  In 
his   more   controversial  writings,  the   dignity   of 


246  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

human  nature  shines  in  contrast  with  the  doctrines 
of  total  depravity  and  man's  fallen  nature.  There 
are  concessions  to  the  latter  in  the  earlier  preach- 
ing, but  they  are  not  fatal  to  man's  greatness.  In 
his  fallen  state,  he  is  not 

Less  than  archangel  ruiu'd  and  th'  excess 
Of  glory  obscured. 

It  is  his  character  and  not  his  nature  that  is  bad. 
Channing's  dignity  of  human  nature  did  not  blind 
him  to  the  defects  of  human  character,  though  he 
took  more  delight  in  dwelling  on  its  nobilities. 
But  no  defect  of  character  worked  corruption  of 
nature  to  his  understanding.  On  the  contrary,  he 
found  humanity  "  magnificent  in  sin  "  (not  his 
phrase,  I  need  hardly  say,  but  Browning's),  proofs 
of  its  grandeur  in  the  heights  from  which  it  falls, 
the  daring  of  its  disobedience,  the  energy  of  its 
self-recovery. 

Its  most  classical  form  was  given  to  his  perva- 
sive thought  in  one  of  the  letters  of  his  later  life. 
There  has  been,  he  says,  more  unity  in  his  preach- 
ing than  in  that  of  some  other  Liberal  Christians, 
"  in  consequence  of  the  strong  hold  which  one  sub- 
lime idea  has  taken  on  [his]  mind.  This  is  the 
greatness  of  the  soul,  its  divinity,  its  union  with 
God,  its  unity  with  God,  —  not  by  passive  depend- 
ence, but  by  spiritual  likeness,  —  its  receptiveness 
of  his  spirit,  its  self -forming  power,  its  destina- 
tion to  ineffable  glory,  its  inomortality.  ...  To 
awaken  men  to  what  is  within  them,  to  help  them 
to  understand  the  infinite  treasure  of   their  own 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  247 

souls,  such  seems  to  me  the  object  which  is  to  be 
ever  kept  in  sight.  This  is  an  entirely  different 
thing  from  fiUing  their  heads  with  vague  notions 
about  human  dignity.  What  we  want  is  to  awaken 
in  them  a  consciousness  of  their  own  nature  and 
of  the  intimate  relation  it  establishes  between  them 
and  God,  and  to  rouse  their  whole  energy  to  the 
work  of  their  own  redemption  and  perfection."  In 
his  lecture  on  Self-Culture,  and  in  the  lectures  on 
"  The  Elevation  of  the  Laboring  Classes,"  and  in 
the  sermons  "  Likeness  to  God  "  and  "  The  Imita- 
bleness  of  Christ's  Character,"  the  long  mountain 
range  of  Channing's  most  engrossing  thought  is 
lifted  into  some  of  its  higher  peaks  and  domes,  — 
to  the  highest,  possibly,  in  the  second  of  the  ser- 
mons in  "  The  Perfect  Life." 

I  do  and  I  must  reverence  human  nature.  ...  I  know 
its  history.  I  shut  my  eyes  to  none  of  its  weaknesses 
and  crimes.  .  .  .  But  the  signatures  of  its  origin  and 
its  end  are  impressed  too  deeply  to  be  ever  wholly 
effaced.  I  bless  it  for  its  kind  affections,  for  its  strong 
and  tender  love.  I  honor  it  for  its  struggles  against 
oppression,  for  its  growth  and  progress  under  the  weight 
of  so  many  chains  and  prejudices,  for  its  achievements 
in  science  and  art,  and  still  more  for  its  examples  of 
heroic  and  saintly  virtue.  These  are  marks  of  a  divine 
origin,  and  the  pledges  of  a  celestial  inheritance. 
('^  Likeness  to  God.") 

There  was  not,  perhaps,  entire  coherency  in  the 
terms  of  his  appreciation  of  humanity.  Sometimes 
the  intellectual,  sometimes  the  moral  aspect  took 


248  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

on  the  most  entrancing  light.  But  then  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  "  reason  "  of  his  lofty  and 
perpetual  praise  was  conceived  by  him  as  "  moral 
reason,"  and  that  he  used  the  word  "  mind  "  inclu- 
sively. It  was  for  him  as  big  a  word  as  soul,  im- 
plying more  than  that,  —  at  once  the  intellectual 
and  the  moral  elements.  A  careless  person  might 
easily  imagine  Channing  given  over  unduly  to 
"  mind-worship,"  but  a  little  attention  to  his  use 
of  terms  should  correct  the  misapprehension.  The 
following  passages  illustrate  the  predominance  of 
the  ethical  note,  even  where  the  intellectual  sounds 
clear  and  strong. 

The  greatness  of  the  soul  is  especially  seen  in  the 
intellectual  energy  which  discerns  absolute,  universal 
truth,  in  the  idea  of  God,  in  freedom  of  will  and  moral 
power,  in  disinterestedness  and  self-sacrifice,  in  the 
boundlessness  of  love,  in  aspirations  after  affection,  in 
desires  and  affections,  which  time  and  space  cannot  con- 
fine, and  the  world  cannot  fill.  The  soul,  viewed  in 
these  lights,  should  fill  us  with  awe.  It  is  an  immortal 
germ  which  may  be  said  to  contain  now  within  itself 
what  endless  ages  are  to  unfold.  It  is  truly  an  image 
of  the  infinity  of  God.  ("  Introductory  Remarks  "  to 
six-volume  edition.) 

Am  I  asked  for  my  conception  of  the  dignity  of  a 
human  being?  I  should  say  that  it  consists,  first,  in 
that  spiritual  principle  called  sometimes  the  reason, 
sometimes  the  conscience,  which,  rising  above  what  is 
local  and  temporary,  discerns  immutable  truth  and 
everlasting  right ;  which,  in  the  midst  of  imperfect 
things,  conceives  of  perfection ;  which  is  universal  and 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  249 

impartial,  standing  in  direct  opposition  to  the  partial, 
selfish  principles  of  human  nature ;  which  says  to  me 
with  authority  that  my  neighbor  is  as  precious  as  myself, 
and  his  rights  as  sacred  as  my  own ;  which  commands 
me  to  receive  all  truth,  however  it  may  war  with  my 
pride,  and  to  do  all  justice,  however  it  may  conflict  with 
my  interest ;  and  which  calls  me  to  rejoice  with  love  in 
all  that  is  beautiful,  good,  holy,  happy,  in  whatever 
being  these  attributes  may  be  found.  This  principle  is 
a  ray  of  divinity  in  man.  ("  Elevation  of  the  Labor- 
ing Classes.") 

In  "  Honor  Due  to  All  Men  "  we  read  :  "  The 
sense  of  duty  is  the  greatest  gift  of  God.  The 
Idea  of  Right  is  the  primary  and  highest  revela- 
tion of  God  to  the  human  mind,  and  all  outward 
revelations  are  founded  on  and  addressed  to  it. 
All  mysteries  of  science  and  theology  fade  away 
before  the  simple  perception  of  duty  which  dawns 
on  the  mind  of  the  little  child."  It  was  such 
passages  as  this  that  made  Emerson  bless  Chan- 
ning  as  one  of  those  who  had  said  his  good  things 
before  him.  There  were  intimations  of  his  "  Over- 
Soul  "  in  that  "  law  for  God  also "  which  Dr. 
Gannett  thought  a  spot  on  Channing's  sun.  Ex- 
actly in  his  line,  moreover,  were  Channing's  recur- 
rences to  his  beloved  thought  of  the  oneness  of 
all  minds.  His  doctrine  of  the  greatness  of  the 
soul  reached  to  its  culmination  in  this  thought. 

Here,  then,  we  learn  the  greatness  of  human  nature. 
This  moral  principle  —  the  supreme  law  in  man  —  is  the 
law  of  the  universe  —  the  very  law  to  which  the  high- 


250  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

est  beings  are  subject,  and  in  obeying  which  they  find 
their  elevation  and  their  joy.  Thus  man  and  the  high- 
est beings  are  essentially  of  one  order.  They  form  one 
family.  The  same  spirit  of  goodness  enlivens  all.  To 
all  there  is  the  same  supreme  law,  the  same  supreme 
good.  Imagination  and  genius,  in  their  most  inspired 
moments,  can  picture  nothing  in  heaven  brighter  than 
moral  goodness  —  that  very  goodness  which  unfolds  in 
the  humblest  human  heart.  This  goodness  is  seen  by 
us  intuitively  to  be  confined  to  no  place,  to  no  time,  to 
be  the  growth  of  no  nation  and  no  world,  but  to  be  uni- 
versal, eternal,  immutable,  absolute,  and  worthy  of  high- 
est veneration  and  love  by  all  spirits,  forever.  Can  we, 
then,  look  on  the  human  soul,  which  is  at  once  the 
oracle  and  the  subject  of  this  universal  and  eternal  law, 
as  created  only  for  time  and  this  narrow  earth  ? 

Here  is  the  argument  for  immortality  on  which 
Channing  most  relied  when  he  had  come  into  com- 
pletest  self-possession.  He  believed  very  simply 
in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  and  in  his  earlier 
preaching  (that  of  the  Dudleian  Lecture,  for  exam- 
ple) he  based  all  certainty  of  immortality  on  that. 
I  am  not  aware  that  in  set  terms  he  ever  put  this 
view  aside.  But  gradually  the  emphasis  on  it 
faded  out,  while  with  equal  step  the  emphasis  upon 
the  natural  argument  for  immortality  increased. 
He  took  no  pleasure,  as  did  many  others,  in  mini- 
mizing the  natural  intimations  of  a  future  life. 
He  delighted  in  all  these,  and,  as  he  dwelt  on 
them,  they  became  more  and  more  persuasive  to 
his  mind,  until  practically  his  faith  in  inmiortality 
was  based  on  these  and  not  on  the  New  Testa- 
ment's climacteric  miracle. 


WHAT   CHANNING  PREACHED  251 

We  have  all  felt,  when  looking  above  us  into  the 
atmosphere,  that  there  was  an  infinity  of  space  which 
we  could  not  explore.  When  I  look  into  man's  spirit 
and  see  there  the  germs  of  an  immortal  life,  I  feel 
more  deeply  that  an  infinity  lies  hid  beyond  what  I  see. 
In  the  idea  of  Duty,  which  springs  up  in  every  human 
heart,  I  discern  a  Law  more  sacred  and  boundless  than 
gravitation,  which  binds  the  soul  to  a  more  glorious 
universe  than  that  to  which  attraction  binds  the  body, 
and  which  is  to  endure  though  the  laws  of  physical 
nature  pass  away.  Every  moral  sentiment,  every  intel- 
lectual action,  is  to  me  a  hint,  a  prophetic  sign,  of  a 
spiritual  power  to  be  expanded  forever.  ("  Ministry 
for  the  Poor.") 

The  voice  of  our  whole  nature,  indeed,  properly  in- 
terpreted, is  a  cry  after  higher  existence.  The  restless 
activity  of  life  is  but  a  pressing  forward  towards  a 
fulness  of  good  not  to  be  found  on  earth.  ("  Perfect 
Life,"  sermon  ii.) 

Such  was  Channing's  relish  for  activity,  intellec- 
tual and  moral,  that  the  rest  which  remains  for  the 
people  of  God  had  for  him  slight  attraction.  He 
desired  a  heaven  in  which  to  work  as  his  miserable 
body  had  not  permitted  him  to  do  on  earth.  "  I 
think  of  heaven,"  he  said,  "  as  a  world  of  stupendous 
plans  and  efforts  for  its  own  improvement.  I  think 
of  it  as  a  society  passing  through  successive  stages 
of  development,  virtue,  knowledge,  power,  by  the 
energy  of  its  own  members."  In  such  a  heaven, 
"  one  angel's  history  may  be  a  volume  of  more 
various  truth  than  all  the  records  of  our  race." 
He    had    more    homely   and    more    comfortable 


252  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

thouglits.  Pure  spirit  was  not  to  his  mind.  He 
could  not  endure  "  the  thought  of  being  separated 
from  this  harmonious  and  glorious  universe."  He 
expected  death  "  to  multiply  his  connections  with 
it."  "  An  increasing  variety  of  exquisite  sensa- 
tions "  was  certainly  a  strange  demand  from  one 
so  hyperspiritual  as  Channing.  It  is  a  note  that 
we  could  ill  afford  to  spare.  It  reflects  his  exqui- 
site sensibility,  —  so  exquisite  that  "  a  glance  at  a 
natural  landscape,  or  even  the  sight  of  a  beautiful 
flower "  in  moments  of  great  bodily  weakness 
"  gave  [him]  a  bodily  pain  from  which  he  shrank." 
The  most  frequent  and  persistent  objection  to 
Channing  from  the  orthodox  standi3oint  has  been 
that  he  did  not  sufficiently  appreciate  the  exceed- 
ing sinfulness  of  sin,  —  did  not  make  enough  of 
sin  in  his  doctrines  of  human  nature  and  spiritual 
development.^  He  did  not,  we  are  told,  habitually 
trace  back  the  diversified  forms  of  selfish  and 
unrighteous  action  "  to  the  fans  et  origo  malorum 
—  the  mysterious  alienation  of  men  from  the  fel- 
lowship of  God."  For  Channing  the  ahenation 
was  not  mysterious ;  nay,  more,  it  did  not  exist : 
"  If  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  thou  art  there."  There 
was  no  escape  from  the  upholding  of  the  everlast- 
ing arms.  Of  any  background  of  sin  in  human 
nature  Channing  was  certainly  not  aware,  once  he 
had  come  into  entire  possession  of  the  liberal 
ground.     But  of  sin  in  the  concrete,  and  of   its 

1  See  Professor  Fisher's  History  of  Christian  Doctrine,  pp.  421- 
432,  and  particularly  p.  429. 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  253 

sinfulness,  those  must  be  hard  to  satisfy  who  do 
not  find  enough  in  Channing's  representation  of 
society  and  the  individual.  There  is,  too,  in  this 
an  adequate  account  of  those  sinful  dispositions, 
from  "  whence  come  wars  and  fightings  "  and  con- 
crete sins  of  all  kinds.  So  far  was  his  conception 
of  human  nature  from  lessening  the  dreadfulness 
of  sin  for  him,  that  it  gave  him  a  ground  of  color 
from  which  this  dreadfulness  stood  out  as  clear  as 
winter  stars  from  the  deep  blue-black  sky.  ''  Great 
sin  implies  a  great  capacity ;  it  is  the  abuse  of  a 
noble  nature.  .  .  .  The  malignity  of  sin  can  only  ^  f^ji^j/^^/^ 
be  understood  and  felt  when  sin  is  viewed  as  the  ,.;       f«^i 

ruin  of  God's  noblest  work."  Orthodoxy  repre-  . 
sented  sin  as  infinite  because  it  was  sinned  against 
an  infinite  being.  Here,  Channing  thought,  was  a 
mere  verbal  catch.  It  was  as  the  sin  of  "  such  an 
infinite,  eternal  being  as  is  the  human  soul "  (sic 
Coleridge)  that  it  was  terrible  to  Channing's  mind. 
"  He  alone  can  speak  of  sin  as  an  infinite  evil,  and 
concentrate  against  it  the  whole  energy  of  the 
soul's  aversion  and  dread,  who  has  faith  in  the 
unlimited  capacities  of  our  spiritual  nature  and 
who  knows  that  by  love  man  has  affinity  with 
God." 

A  mechanical  search  for  Channing's  doctrine  of 
sin  would  take  one  first  of  all  to  his  sermon,  "  The 
Evil  of  Sin."  But  this  is  one  of  the  most  formal 
and  uninspired  of  all  Channing's  discourses,  one 
of  a  kind  which  many  others  could  preach  as  well 
as  he,  or  better.     It  is  interesting,  however,  as 


^v 


254  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

containing  Channing's  most  definite  dissent  from 
the  Universalism  of  his  time,  as  by  him  under- 
stood. Channing's  aloofness  cost  him  a  good  deah 
It  was  somewhat  with  BaUou  as  it  was  with  Gar- 
rison :  Channing  had  not  that  personal  knowledge 
of  either  that  could  qualify  him  for  a  just  under- 
standing. Either's  personality  woidd  have  set  the 
doctrine  of  either  in  an  attractive  light.  But  as 
Channing  drew  nearer  and  nearer  to  Garrison,  so 
he  drew  nearer  and  nearer  to  Ballou.  He  could 
not  conceive  of  the  mere  accident  of  death  as 
making  any  appreciable  difference  in  a  man's  char- 
acter. It  could  set  no  limit  either  way.  There 
would  be  the  possibility  of  further  lapse  ;  also  that 
of  infinite  advance.  And  all,  at  last,  would  set 
their  feet  upon  the  upward  climb.  The  fires  of 
the  orthodox  hell  burned  out  for  him  before  he  had 
proceeded  far.  "  Infinite,  endless  punishment," 
he  said,  "  would  make  hell  the  most  interesting 
spot  in  the  universe.  All  the  sympathies  of  heaven 
would  be  turned  towards  it."  He  denounced  the 
idea  of  such  punishment  as  blasphemy  ;  but  — 

There  is  something  far  worse  than  outward  punish- 
ment. It  is  sin  ;  it  is  the  state  of  a  soul  which  has 
revolted  from  God,  which  renounces  its  Father,  and 
hardens  itself  against  Infinite  Love ;  which,  endued 
with  divine  powers,  enthralls  itself  to  animal  lusts ; 
which  makes  gain  its  God ;  .  .  .  which,  living  under 
God's  eye,  dreads  man's  frown  or  scorn,  and  prefers 
human  praise  to  its  own  calm  consciousness  of  virtue ; 
which  tamely  yields  to  temptation,  shrinks  with  a  cow- 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  255 

ard's  baseness  from  the  perils  of  duty,  and  sacrifices  its 
glory  and  peace  in  parting  with  self-control.  No  ruin 
can  be  compared  to  this. 

Such  is  the  involution  of  Channing's  leading 
thoughts  that,  coming  to  his  thought  of  God,  I  find 
that  who  will  has  already  heard  my  story  told  in 
good  part.  When  our  Liverpool  preacher,  Rich- 
ard A.  Armstrong,  made  a  little  book,  "  Man's 
Knowledge  of  God,"  and  sent  copies  of  it  to  Car- 
dinal Newman  and  the  cardinal's  ultra-heretical 
brother,  Francis,  the  same  post  brought  him  an- 
swers of  warm  approval  from  them  both.  Chan- 
ning's theology,  in  general,  was  less  unlike  the 
cardinal's  than  was  his  brother's,  but,  like  his,  it 
agreed  with  the  cardinal's  in  finding  conscience 
to  be  man's  open  door  to  God :  "  We  learn  the 
divinity  through  a  divine  principle  within  our- 
selves ...  by  giving  up  all  to  virtue,  and  in  no 
other  way.  .  .  .  Whenever  we  think,  speak,  or 
act  with  moral  energy  and  resolute  devotion  to 
duty,  be  the  occasion  ever  so  humble,  obscure, 
familiar,  then  the  divinity  is  growing  within  us." 
But  while  the  idea  of  God  rises  preeminently  in 
conscience,  it  is  to  conscience  as  its  vital  air. 
"  Religion  gives  infinite  worth  to  conscience.  From 
it  I  learn  that  my  idea  of  right  is  not  an  individual, 
private,  personal  conviction,  but  that  it  is  derived 
from  the  Universal  Parent ;  that  it  is  his  inspira- 
tion ;  that  it  is  not  a  lonely  voice  in  my  soul,  but 
the  word  of  the  Infinite  Will." 

Channing's  persuasion  of  the  divine  reality  an- 


256  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

ticipated  the  Transcendentalists  in  its  reliance 
upon  inward  strength.  In  the  later  years,  the 
cosmic  wonder  grew  upon  his  mind ;  in  the  earlier 
it  was  the  drowsy  echo  of  that  natural  theology 
which  Paley  and  his  kind  had  taken  over  from  the 
Deists  whom  they  so  heartily  despised.  It  is  no 
echo  that  we  hear  in  the  sermon,  "  God  revealed 
in  the  Universe  and  in  Humanity,"  in  "  The  Per- 
fect Life,"  but  the  sincere  cry  of  a  strong  man 
looking  out  upon  the  world  through  his  own  eyes. 
But  from  within  outward  was  the  habitual  pro- 
cession of  his  thought :  "  The  idea  of  God,  sublime 
and  awful  as  it  is,  is  the  idea  of  our  own  spiritual 
natures  purified  and  enlarged  to  infinity."  If  Chan- 
ning  has  a  thought  to  which  he  recurs  more  fre- 
quently than  this,  it  is  that  of  the  eternal  Father- 
hood. In  his  earlier  preaching,  this  is  presented 
as  one  of  the  great  assets  of  supernatural  Chris- 
tianity, a  conclusion  not  to  be  reached  by  any  path 
less  steep  than  that.  But  the  emphasis  upon  this 
view  soon  began  to  slacken,  then  the  view  dropped 
out  of  the  enlarging  thought,  until  at  length  we 
have  the  Fatherhood  of  God  firmly  based  on  the 
soul's  normal  experience.  There  was  more  exi- 
gency than  softness  in  the  doctrine  as  Channing 
entertained  it  in  the  plenitude  of  his  power.  He 
expressly  disclaimed  the  indulgent  human  parent 
as  the  form  on  which  the  idea  of  the  Divine  Parent 
should  be  shaped.  Even  when  preaching  on  "  The 
Father's  Love  for  Persons,"  that  love  is  repre- 
sented as  his  inflexible  demand  for  moral  excel- 


WHAT  CHANNING  PREACHED  257 

lence,  without  which  there  can  be  no  joyous  con- 
sciousness of  filial  relationship  with  him.  The 
supreme  satisfaction  which  Channing  found  him- 
self and  pressed  on  others,  in  the  Divine  Paternity, 
was  that  unity  of  mind  —  "all  minds  of  one  fam- 
ily " —  to  which  we  have  already  attended  on  its 
manward  side.  Channing  had  his  doctrine  of 
divine  immanence  as  well  as  Parker,  though  with 
less  reiteration,  and  with  scanty  recognition  on  the 
physical  side.  His  was  the  thought  for  which  the 
words  would  come  in  time,  "  Our  Father  who  art  *^ 
within." 

He  pervades,  he  penetrates  our  souls.  .  .  .  We  do 
not  discern  him  because  he  is  too  near,  too  inward,  too 
deep  to  be  recognized  by  our  present  imperfect  con- 
sciousness. And  he  is  thus  near,  not  only  to  discern, 
but  to  act,  to  influence,  to  give  his  spirit,  to  communi- 
cate to  us  divinity.  This  is  the  great  paternal  gift  of 
God  ...  his  disinterested,  impartial,  universal  good- 
ness, which  diffuses  beauty,  life,  and  happiness.  .  .  . 
This  influence  of  God,  exerted  on  the  soul  to  conform  it 
to  himself,  to  make  it  worthy  of  its  divine  parentage,  this 
it  is  which  most  clearly  manifests  what  is  meant  by  God 
being  our  Father. 

When  Channing  says,  "  There  is  but  one 
ground  for  virtuous  affection  in  the  universe,  but 
one  object  of  cherished  and  enduring  love  in 
heaven  or  on  earth,  and  that  is  Moral  Goodness,"  ^ 
he  not  only  says  that  which  he  repeats  oftener 
than  anything  else,  but  that  which  takes  up  and  co- 
ordinates aU  his  other  thoughts  to  a  preeminent 


258  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

degree.  What  is  more  and  better,  we  feel,  we  are 
obliged  to  feel,  that  he  is  speaking  with  an  abso- 
lute sincerity,  that  a  passion  for  moral  goodness 
was  the  consuming  passion  of  his  life,  and  that 
what  he  aspired  to  be,  he  was.  As  we  go  along 
with  him,  we  sometimes  seem  to  thread  a  labyrinth 
and  to  come  back  over  and  over  again  to  the  same 
point,  not  without  weariness.  But  the  last  effect 
is  of  emergence  on  some  crowning  height,  from 
which  we  look  abroad  upon  a  landscape  bathed  in 
golden  air,  and  feel  upon  our  faces  the  freshening  of 
a  mighty  wind  which  blows  forever  through  the  uni- 
verse of  souls,  —  the  spirit  of  good  whereby  God 
lives,  and  we  live  also,  now  and  forevermore  in  him 
and  with  him. 


CHAPTER  IX 

BETWEEN   TWO    FIRES 

Channing  was  born  in  a  slaveholding  State, 
and  in  a  town  known  for  some  time  after  his 
birth  as  "the  slave  market  of  America."  The 
gradual  manumission  of  slaves  in  Rhode  Island 
was  not  quite  complete  at  the  time  of  Channing's 
death.  His  immediate  family  had  barely  freed 
itself  from  the  common  taint  of  the  community,  in 
his  early  years.  During  the  later  he  was  charged 
with  "living  in  luxury  at  the  price  of  blood,"  the 
allusion  being  to  Mr.  Gibbs,  his  wife's  father,  who 
had  owned  a  distillery  and  had  sometimes  exchanged 
its  product  with  the  slave  dealers  for  their  slaves.^ 
These  things  make  it  appear  strange  that  Chan- 
ning encountered  slavery  in  Virginia  as  a  fresh 
experience.  The  field  hand  was  a  different  slave 
from  the  domestic  servant  of  his  Newport  ac- 
quaintance, but  the  slave  traffic  should,  it  would 
seem,  have  impressed  his  youthful  imagination 
more  painfully  than  it  did.  The  main  effect  of 
his  earliest  contact  with  slavery  was,  I  think,  to 
breed  in  him  that  conviction  of  the  possible  good- 
ness of  individuals,   enmeshed  in   an  abominable 

^  See  his  letter  to  Miss  Peabodj  in  her  Reminiscences,  pp.  360- 
363. 


260  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

system,  which  runs  through  all  his  antislavery 
writings,  as  a  criticism  upon  the  sterner  Abolition- 
ist construction.  He  had  known  those  whom  he 
must  remember  as  good  men  and  women  in  de- 
spite of  their  slave-owning  and  the  fact  that  some 
of  them  had  looked  to  slavery  as  a  source  of  gain, 
a  circumstance  of  peculiar  horror  in  his  eyes. 

It  is  another  strangeness  that  his  impressions  of 
slavery  in  Virginia,  so  acute  and  painful,  gave  no 
obviously  continuous  character  to  his  antislavery 
thought.  I  do  not,  for  example,  find  any  evi- 
dence that  the  adoption  of  the  Missouri  Compro- 
mise, in  1820,  excited  in  him  any  noble  rage, 
though  I  have  made  diligent  search.  The  argu- 
ment from  the  silence  of  history  is  easily  falla- 
cious, but  it  is  certainly  strange  that  a  commotion 
which  shook  the  country  to  its  centre  left  no  trace 
upon  the  sermons,  letters,  journals,  of  which  we 
have  so  great  an  abundance.  Surely,  that  "  Doric 
Hall  meeting,"  of  which  Webster  was  the  con- 
spicuous light,  and  in  which  James  T.  Austin  ^ 
played  a  leading  part,  must  have  warmed  his  blood 
with  its  protesting  resolutions  ;  or  was  he  at  that 
time  too  deeply  immersed  in  the  consciousness  of 
his  physical  wretchedness  to  think  of  anything 
else  ?  Never  at  any  time  was  his  interest  in  Eng- 
lish social  and  political  reforms  much  less  than  in 

1  Of  "whom  we  shall  see  more  hereafter  as  attorney-general  of 
Massachusetts,  prosecuting  Abner  Kneeland  and  defending  the 
murder  of  Lovejoy,  in  either  event  confronting  Channing  as  a 
principal  opponent. 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  261 

our  own,  and  our  first  sign  of  his  awakening  con- 
sciousness of  our  miserable  condition  is  a  letter  to 
an  Englisli  correspondent  in  1828.  He  did  not 
then  appreciate  the  relative  evil  of  our  system : 
he  was  always  slow  to  entertain  opinions  sharply 
traversing  his  good  opinion  of  mankind.  But  the 
most  characteristic  note  of  his  opposition  to  slavery 
appears  in  this  early  letter  :  "  Even  where  slavery 
provides  sufficiently  for  the  physical  being,  it  de- 
stroys the  intellectual  and  moral  being,  and  utterly 
extinguishes  the  hope  and  capacity  of  progress." 
Here,  as  everywhere,  the  dignity  of  human  nature, 
the  greatness  of  the  soul,  w^as  central  to  Channing's 
interest  in  practical  reform. 

But  he  was  now  to  have  another  opportunity  to 
see  slavery  close  at  hand.  The  quest  for  health, 
always  fruitless,  but  ever  hopefully  renewed,  took 
him  in  the  fall  of  1830  to  St.  Croix,  in  the  West 
Indies,  thirty  years  later  the  first  stage  of  Parker's 
final  pilgrimage.  "  Here  was  a  volume  on  slavery 
opened  always  before  my  eyes,  and  how  could  I 
help  learning  some  of  its  lessons?  "  How  carefully 
he  studied  them  his  letters  of  the  time  bear  wit- 
ness, and  various  writings  after  his  return.  With 
characteristic  but  unfortunate  judgment  he  omit- 
ted from  subsequent  editions  of  his  "  Slavery  "  a 
note  which  constituted  the  value  of  the  first  edi- 
tion, as  did  not  the  "  principles  from  which  he  was 
unwilling  to  divert  his  readers'  attention  to  details." 
The  details  were  those  of  the  slave's  subjection 
to  the  master's  cruelty  and  licentiousness.   Return- 


262  WILLIAM   ELLERY"  CHANNING 

ing  to  Boston  after  a  six-montlis'  course  in  this 
study,  lie  at  once  made  his  experience  the  subject 
of  a  sermon  to  the  Federal  Street  society.  He 
had  found  the  old  severity  of  discipline  relaxed. 
"  Still,"  he  said,  "  I  think  no  power  of  conception 
can  do  justice  to  the  evils  of  slavery.  They  are 
chiefly  moral ;  they  act  on  the  mind,  and,  through 
the  mind,  bring  intense  suffering  on  the  body.  As 
far  as  the  human  soul  can  be  destroyed,  slavery  is 
that  destroyer."  From  that  discourse,  which  de- 
manded the  same  reprobation  for  American  as  for 
West  Indian  slavery,  dated  the  beginning  of  a  pe- 
riod throughout  which  the  love  of  Channmg's  peo- 
ple for  him  waxed  cold.  Or  was  the  beginning 
further  back,  in  those  assaults  upon  the  love  of 
gain  which  he  continually  renewed,  finding  in  that 
love  the  main  strength  of  slavery,  and  as  much  a 
Northern  as  a  Southern  fault  ?  What  is  certain  is 
that  Channing's  impressive  generalizations  were 
more  congenial  to  his  people  than  his  particular 
appHcations,  and  that,  as  these  became  more  pro- 
minent, many  were  irritated  by  his  exalted  reputa^ 
tion,  which  made  it  difficult  to  dispense  with  his 
services  in  any  summary  manner. 

Something  had  happened  during  Channing's 
stay  in  St.  Croix  that  might  well  make  his  people 
hypersensitive  to  his  criticism  of  slavery.  In  Jan- 
uary, 1831,  Garrison  had  flung  the  banner  of  the 
"  Liberator  "  to  the  wind,  bearing  a  motto  which 
has  not  been  bettered  in  the  annals  of  reform.  The 
first  numbers  had  been  printed  from  "  Examiner  " 


BETWEEN   TWO   FIRES  263 

type,  Garrison  and  liis  assistant  paying  for  the  use 
of  the  type  by  work  on  the  "  Examiner."  Chan- 
ning  at  once  became  a  subscriber  ^  and  a  dili- 
gent reader,  with  strong  attraction  to  its  essential 
spirit,  with  serious  doubts  as  to  its  manner  of  pre- 
senting its  ideas  and  its  aims.  Garrison's  demoli- 
tion of  the  colonization  fallacy  found  in  him  ready 
sympathy,  and  he  could  accept  "  immediate  eman- 
cipation "  as  meaning  "  the  earliest  practicable  ;  " 
but  Garrison  and  his  coadjutors  dealt  with  the 
slaveholders  as  a  mass,  when  to  him  they  were 
individuals  of  the  most  various  degrees  of  immoral- 
ity. It  happened,  consequently,  that  for  ten  years 
Channing  found  himself  between  two  fires,  never 
pleasing  the  conservative  part  of  the  community 
and  of  his  own  society ;  seldom  satisfying  the  Abo- 
litionists with  the  extent  of  his  adhesion  to  their 
side ;  in  proportion  as  he  pleased  them  grieving 
the  conservative  party ;  denounced  by  this  party 
as  an  Abolitionist,  while  simultaneously  regarded 
by  the  Abolitionists  as  an  open  enemy.  For  the 
most  part  these  had  kindlier  feeling  for  him  than 
had  their  extreme  opponents.  They  rejoiced  in 
his  concessions  while  resenting  his  criticisms.  To 
the  conservatives,  meantime,  he  was  more  anathema 
than  Garrison.  As  one  of  their  own  set,  he  was 
expected  to  abide  by  their  traditions.  He  was 
little  better  than  a  traitor  in  their  eyes. 

^  "One  of  the  first,"  says  Miss  Peabody,  but  one  can  never 
feel  sure  of  her  facts.  In  one  short  paragraph  (p.  360)  I  have 
found  four  mistakes,  three  of  them  gross. 


264  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

It  is  unhappily  true  that  the  first  effect  of  Abo- 
litionism upon  Channing  was  to  defer  his  indi- 
vidual action.  While  still  in  the  West  Indies  he 
planned  and  began  to  write  his  elaborate  essay, 
"  Slavery,"  which  after  his  return  was  put  aside 
and  no?  taken  up  again  for  several  years.  He  could 
plead  arrest  of  judgment  on  account  of  ill  health 
and  seK-distrust,  but  unwillingness  to  be  con- 
founded with  the  Abolitionists  or  to  criticise  them 
publicly  was  probably  the  factor  that  was  most 
deterrent.  The  liarshest  judgment  of  his  general 
course  is  that  of  Mrs.  Chapman  ^  in  her  appendix 
to  the  autobiography  of  Harriet  Martineau.  It  is 
a  railing  accusation  that  is  forced  on  our  attention 
by  the  nobility  of  its  personal  source. 

Dr.  Channing,  between  whom  and  Harriet  Martineau 
a  true  friendship  subsisted  to  the  day  of  his  death,  was 
a  good  man,  but  not  in  any  sense  a  great  one.  .  .  .  He 
had  neither  insight,  courage,  nor  firmness.  In  his  own 
church  had  sprung  up  a  vigorous  opposition  to  slav- 
ery, which  he  irmocently,  in  so  far  as  ignorantly,  used 
the  little  power  he  had  to  stay.  He  was  touched  by 
Brougham's  eloquent  denial  of  the  right  of  property  in 
man,  and  he  adopted  the  idea  as  a  theme ;  but  he 
dreaded  any  one  who  claimed,  on  behaK  of  the  slaves, 

^  Maria  Weston  Chapman.  "Her  services  to  Mr.  Garrison," 
say  the  Garrison  sons,  "  were  inestimable,  her  cooperation  with 
him  perfect,  and  on  her  more  than  on  any  other  woman  the  eon- 
duct  of  the  cause  rested."  She  joined  the  Abolitionists  in  1834 
against  the  advice  of  her  pastor.  Dr.  Channing-,  and  soon  became 
the  soul  of  the  Women's  Antislavery  Society.  After  1840  her 
energy  sustained  the  Antislavery  Standard,  and  through  that  the 
Antislavery  Society,  with  unequalled  ardor  and  efl&cieucy. 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES  265 

that  their  masters  should  instantly  renounce  that  right 
of  ownership ;  he  was  terror-stricken  at  the  idea  o£ 
calling  on  the  whole  American  people  to  take  counsel  on 
so  difficult  and  delicate  a  matter  in  antislavery  associa- 
tions ;  and  above  all  he  deprecated  the  admission  of  the 
colored  race  to  our  ranks.  He  had  been  selected  by  a 
set  of  money-making  men  as  their  representative  for 
l^iety,  as  Edward  Everett  was  their  representative  gen- 
tleman and  scholar,  Judge  Story  their  representative 
jurist  and  companion  in  social  life,  and  Daniel  W^ebster 
their  representative  statesman  and  advocate  looking 
after  their  interests  in  Congress. 

Depreciation  could  not  further  go.  Such  "a 
good  man  "  would  be  good  for  nothing.  We  have 
here  Mrs.  Chapman's  superb  devotion  to  Garrison 
expressed  in  terms  of  immitigable  contempt  for 
the  man  who  had  refused  his  personal  sympathy 
to  Garrison  in  his  sorest  need.  Garrison's  own 
resentment  softened  mth  the  lapse  of  time,  and  in 
1848  and  again  in  1880  he  brought  to  Channing's 
memory  a  generous  appreciation.  But  Mrs.  Chap- 
man, who  might  have  forgiven  any  personal  affront, 
could  not  forgive  the  slight  which  had  been  put 
upon  her  noble  friend,  and,  long  brooding  on  it, 
brought  a  monstrous  thing  to  birth.  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau's  conception  of  Dr.  Channing  was  very  dif- 
ferent. Writing  when  his  antislavery  work  was 
not  half  done,  and  when  every  year  was  bringing 
him  into  closer  sympathy  with  the  Abolitionists,  she 
said  ("  Retrospect  of  Western  Travel,"  pp.  121, 
127)  :  "  No  one  out  of  the  United  States  can  have 
an  idea  of  Dr.  Channing's  merit  in  taking  the  part 


266  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

he  lias  adopted  on  this  subject.  .  .  .  He  has  shown 
what  his  moral  courage  is  by  proofs  which  will  long 
outlast  his  indications  of  slowness  in  admitting  the 
full  merits  of  the  Abolitionists.  Here  his  caution 
led  him  into  the  rashness  of  giving  sanction  to 
charges  and  prejudices  against  them,  the  grounds 
of  which  he  had  the  means  of  investigating.  This 
is  all  over  now,  however;  and  it  was  always  a 
trifle  in  comparison  wdth  the  great  service  he  was 
at  the  same  time  rendering  a  cause  which  the 
Abolitionists  cared  for  far  more  than  for  what  the 
whole  world  thought  of  their  characters.  He  is 
now  completely  identified  with  them  in  the  view 
of  all  who  regard  them  as  in  the  vanguard  in 
the  field  of  human  liberties."  The  concluding 
statement  here  was  premature,  and,  perhaps,  never 
quite  exactly  true.  The  identification  was  never, 
I  think,  complete  from  Channing's  point  of  view, 
and  it  certainly  never  was  from  Garrison's.  And 
some  may  be  inclined  to  question  Miss  Martineau's 
judgment,  as  that  of  one  of  those  "  carpet-baggers  " 
who  were  denounced  by  the  "  Daily  Advertiser " 
of  those  days,  though  she  was  for  several  weeks  in 
Dr.  Channing's  family  and  was  admitted  to  his 
inmost  mind.  But  there  were  American  Aboli- 
tionists of  unimpeachable  authority,  who  loved  and 
admired  Garrison  as  much  as  any  could,  whose 
opinion  of  Channing  differed  from  Mrs.  Chapman's 
by  the  whole  heaven's  width.  Lydia  Maria  Child, 
whose  best  portrait  is  that  sketched  by  Lowell  in 
the  "  Fable  for  Critics,"  was  one  of  these  ;  Samuel 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  267 

J.  May,  the  mildest-mannered  man  that  ever  at- 
tempted a  slave  rescue,  was  another.  In  1833 
Mrs.  Child  published  her  "Appeal  in  Favor  of  that 
Class  of  Americans  called  Africans,"  the  most 
important  of  the  first  Abolitionist  publications 
after  Garrison's  "  Thoughts  on  Colonization  "  of 
the  previous  year.^  She  sent  a  copy  to  Dr.  Chan- 
ning,  and  in  a  few  days  he  came  to  see  her.  His 
long  walk  from  Mt.  Vernon  Street  to  Cottage 
Place  had  taxed  his  strength  severely,  but  he  was 
still  good  for  nearly  three  hours'  talk.  He  ex- 
pressed great  satisfaction  in  the  "  Appeal,"  and 
urged  Mrs.  Child  never  to  desert  the  cause,  let 
come  what  would.  (She  was  faithful  to  that  little 
needed  admonition,  sacrificing  her  literary  reputa- 
tion, as  Whittier  his  political  opportunity,  on  the 
altar  of  humanity  to  man.)  In  some  respects  he 
thought  she  went  too  far.  "  He  then  entertained 
the  idea,  which  he  afterward  discarded,  that  slav- 
ery existed  [in  the  South]  in  a  milder  form  than 
elsewhere."  ^  The  little  woman  stood  out  valiantly 
for  her  opinion,  and  Dr.  Channing  did  his  best  to 

1  Whittier' s  Justice  and  Expediency  (1883)  came  next  in  time 
and  in  degree.  The  year  1833  was  fertile  in  productions  that 
sprang"  from  Garrison's  prolific  seed.  Mrs.  Child  speaks  of  her 
Appeal  as  ''  the  first  hook  of  such  a  character,"  but  this  only 
means  that  Garrison's  "  word  of  God  "  was  not  bound.  It  was 
an  octavo  pamphlet  of  240  pages. 

2  In  1839,  Theodore  D.  Weld's  American  Slavery  as  it  is,  with 
its  "  Testimony  of  a  Thousand  Witnesses,"  was  exceedingly  con- 
vincing on  this  point.  James  Freeman  Clarke's  six  years  in 
Kentucky  (1833-39)  cured  him  effectually  of  Channing's  early 
view,  and  the  Kentucky  form  of  slavery  was  not  the  worst. 


268  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

moderate  her  "  with  those  calm,  wise  words  which 
none  spoke  so  well  as  he."  I  can  imagine  how 
her  beautiful  dark  eyes,  which  I  remember  so  well 
in  their  last  unfailing  brilliancy,  must  have  flashed 
as  she  withstood  the  doctor  to  the  face. 

We  afterwards  had  many  interviews.  He  often  sent 
for  me,  when  I  was  in  Boston,  and  always  urged  me  to 
come  and  tell  him  of  every  new  aspect  of  the  antislavery 
cause.  At  every  interview  I  could  see  that  he  grew 
bolder  and  stronger  on  the  subject,  while  I  felt  that  I 
grew  wiser  and  more  just.  At  first  I  thought  him  timid, 
and  even  slightly  time-serving ;  but  I  soon  discovered 
that  I  formed  this  estimate  from  ignorance  of  his  charac- 
''  ter.  I  learned  that  it  was  justice  to  all,  not  popularity 
'  for  himself,  which  made  him  so  cautious.  He  constantly 
grew  upon  my  respect,  until  I  came  to  regard  him  as 
the  wisest,  as  weU  as  the  gentlest,  apostle  of  humanity. 
.  .  .  He  never  sought  to  undervalue  the  importance 
of  antislavery,  but  he  said  many  things  to  prevent  my 
looking  upon  it  as  the  only  question  interesting  to  hu- 
manity. .  .  .  His  interest  in  the  subject  constantly  in- 
creased, and  I  never  met  him  without  being  struck  with 
the  progress  he  had  made  in  overcoming  some  difficulty, 
which  for  the  time  troubled  his  sensitive  conscience.  I 
can  now  distinctly  recollect  several  such  steps. 

Soon  after  Dr.  Channing's  return  from  the 
West  Indies,  Mr.  May  discovered  his  interest  in 
the  Abolitionists.  Whenever  they  met,  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  was  eager  with  his  inquiries  about  them,  and 
he  frequently  invited  Mr.  May  to  his  house  for  the 
express  purpose  of  talking  over  their  affairs  with 
him.     The  most  memorable  of  these  visits  was  late 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  269 

in  the  fall  of  1834.  So  convinced  was  Mr.  May 
by  this  time  of  the  soundness  of  the  Abolitionist 
position,  and  so  earnest  in  its  defence,  that  his  ar- 
dor got  the  better  of  his  reverence  and  for  the  first 
time  he  found  himseK  debating  the  merits  of  Aboli- 
tionism with  the  man  for  whom,  of  all  living  men, 
he  had  the  greatest  admiration.  "  His  principal, 
if  not  his  only  objections  were  alleged  against  the 
severity  of  our  denunciations,  the  harshness  of  our 
language,  the  vehemence,  heat,  and  excitement 
caused  by  our  meetings."  He  dwelt  upon  these 
objections  until  Mr.  May  became  first  impatient, 
then  indignant,  and  broke  out  warmly,  — 

Dr.  Channing,  I  am  tired  of  these  complaints.  .  .  . 
It  is  not  our  fault  that  those  who  might  have  managed 
this  reform  more  prudently  have  left  us  to  manage  it 
as  we  may  be  able.  It  is  not  our  fault  that  those 
who  might  have  pleaded  for  the  enslaved  so  much 
more  eloquently,  both  with  the  pen  and  with  the  living 
voice,  than  we  can,  have  been  silent.  We  are  not  to 
blame,  sir,  that  you,  who,  more  perhaps  than  any  other 
man,  might  have  so  raised  the  voice  of  remonstrance 
that  it  should  have  been  heard  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  land,  —  we  are  not  to  blame,  sir,  that 
you  have  not  so  spoken.  And  now  because  inferior  men 
have  begun  to  speak  and  act  against  what  you  yourself 
acknowledge  to  be  an  awful  injustice,  it  is  not  becoming 
in  you  to  complain  of  us,  because  we  do  it  in  an  inferior 
style.  Why,  sir,  have  you  not  moved,  why  have  you 
not  spoken  before  ? 

There  was  an  awful  silence  during  which  Mr. 
May  awaited  with  anxiety  the  answer  to  this  dar- 


270  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

ing  speech.  Then  he  heard  Dr.  Channing  saying 
very  quietly,  "  Brother  May,  I  acknowledge  the 
justice  of  your  reproof ;  I  have  been  silent  too  long." 
Soon  after  Mr.  May  was  made  general  agent  of  the 
Antislavery  Society,  and  his  work  took  him  to 
Boston.  He  was  barely  settled  when  Channing 
called  upon  him  and  invited  him  to  preach  for  him. 
He  received  no  similar  invitation  during  his  stay  in 
Boston,  which  extended  over  a  year.  But  Dr. 
Channing  had  not  been  wholly  inactive  before  Mr. 
May  so  lovingly  admonished  him.  In  a  letter  of 
July,  1834,  he  had  written  Dr.  FoUen  ^  protesting 
that  unanimity  was  not  necessary  to  the  antislavery 
cause  ;  that  there  should  be  a  body  of  men,  not  for- 
mally Abolitionists,  "  but  who  uncompromisingly 
maintain  that  the  abolition  of  slavery  ought  imme- 
diately to  be  decided  on,  and  means  used  for  imme- 
diately commencing  this  work."  A  little  later  he 
was  ''  much  shocked  by  the  New  York  riots  "  which 
had  greeted  Garrison  on  his  return  from  his  first 
visit  to  England.  "  The  duty  of  the  Abolitionists," 
he  wrote,  "  seems  to  me  clear.  Whilst  they  ought 
to  review  their  principles  with  great  deliberation, 
they  ought  not,  at  this  moment,  to  recant  anything, 

1  Dr.  Charles  Follen,  a  German  scholar,  teacher,  and  preacher, 
■who  came  to  this  country  in  1824,  seeking-  a  refuge  from  Euro- 
pean political  espionag-e  and  imprisonment.  He  was  one  of  Chan- 
ning's  dearest  friends.  He  joined  himself  to  Garrison  in  1833, 
but,  while  demanding-  emancipation,  would  have  compensated  the 
masters.  We  shall  find  his  name  associated  with  the  most  pain- 
ful experience  of  Channing-'s  life.  See  Life  (1844),  by  his  wife, 
his  coequal  mate  in  mind  and  heart  and  work,  and  "Charles 
Follen,"  page  538  of  Sprague's  Unitarian  Pulpit. 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  271 

because  recantation  will  certainly  be  set  down  to 
the  account  of  fear."  On  his  return  from  Newport 
a  few  weeks  later,  he  made  the  riots  the  subject  of 
his  first  discourse  to  his  people.  Dr.  FoUen  hailed 
it  as  "  an  Abolition  sermon ;  "  others  denounced  it 
as  such.  It  is,  for  us,  one  of  several  proofs  that 
Channing  did  not  confine  his  antislavery  utterance 
to  Thanksgiving  and  Fast  days,  as  some  of  the 
"  dumb  dogs  "  of  recent  times  have  pleaded  in  their 
own  defence.  But  with  its  condemnation  of  the 
mob  spirit,  and  its  demand  for  the  Abolitionists  of 
the  right  of  speech,  he  mingled  adverse  criticism 
of  their  violence  of  denunciation,  and  he  declined 
to  print  the  sermon  because  of  its  inadequacy : 
"  Were  I  to  publish  it,  I  should  feel  myself  bound 
not  only  to  vindicate  the  invaded  rights  of  the  anti- 
slavery  societies,  but  to  enlarge  on  what  I  deem 
their  errors."  Yet  he  ranked  himself  with  them 
in  the  estimation  of  the  slaveholders  and  their 
allies  when  he  exclaimed  in  the  sermon,  "  Property 
in  man  !  Property  in  man  !  You  may  claim  mat- 
ter to  any  extent  you  please  as  property,  —  the 
earth,  the  ocean,  and  the  planets,  but  you  cannot 
touch  a  soul.  I  can  as  easily  conceive  the  angels 
of  heaven  being  property  as  men."  Mr.  May  was 
not  so  easily  convinced  of  Channing' s  complete  Abo- 
litionism as  Dr.  FoUen.  Indeed,  it  was  with  this 
sermon  fresh  in  his  mind  that  he  rebuked  his  tardy 
sympathy. 

Channing  wrote  in  October,  1834,  *'  This  city  has 
not  yet  incurred  the  guilt  and  disgrace  of  outrages 


272  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

intended  to  put  down  by  force  the  public  discus- 
sion of  slavery.  May  we  be  spared  this  infamy ! " 
The  hope  was  prophecy  of  coming  storm.  The 
year  1835  was  preeminently  the  year  of  mobs, 
and  Boston's  turn  came  October  21,  when,  with 
much  incidental  uproar  and  outrage.  Garrison  was 
dragged  in  the  noose  of  a  rope  over  the  ground  of 
the  Boston  Massacre,  barely  escaping  alive,  and  was 
finally  shut  up  in  jail  by  a  distinguished  mayor 
who  could  assure  his  safety  only  by  assuming 
him  to  be  the  instigator  of  the  mob.  This  had 
no  sudden  inspiration,  but  originated  in  an  anti- 
Abolition  meeting  which  was  convened  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  on  the  21st  of  the  preceding  August,  Mayor 
Lyman  in  the  chair.  Channing  wrote  a  semi- 
public  letter  in  advance  of  the  meeting,  deprecat- 
ing its  spirit  and  purpose.     He  said  :  — 

Any  resolve  passed  at  the  proposed  meeting,  imply- 
ing, however  indh'ectly,  that  a  human  being  can  right- 
fully be  held  and  treated  as  property,  —  any  resolve 
intended  to  discourage  the  free  expression  of  opinion  on 
slavery,  or  to  sanction  lawless  violence  which  has  been 
directed  against  the  antislavery  societies,  —  any  resolve 
implying  that  the  Christian  and  philanthropist  may  not 
strive  to  abolish  slavery  by  moral  influences,  by  appeals 
to  the  reason,  conscience,  and  heart  of  the  slaveholder,  — 
any  resolve  expressing  stronger  sympathy  with  the  slave- 
holder than  with  the  slave,  or  tending  at  all  to  encour- 
age the  continuance  of  slavery,  —  will  afflict  me  beyond 
measure  .  .  .  That  Boston  should  in  any  way  lend 
itself  to  the  cause  of  oppression  will  be  a  dark  omen 
indeed. 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES  273 

y'^'^Four  days  after  the  meeting  Channing  wrote  as 
if  his  fears  had  been  confirmed  by  the  event.  But 
the  Abolitionists,  he  said,  "  have  a  deep  conscious- 
ness of  the  truth  and  excellence  of  their  cause. 
They  have,  too,  the  immense  advantage  of  acting 
from  great  principles ;  and  these  alone  give  per- 
manent strength.  Such  men  cannot  be  put  down." 
It  is,  however,  remarkable  that  the  Boston  mob 
leaves  hardly  a  trace  lipon  his  contemporaneous 
letters,^  while  there  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  that  it 
was  the  inspiration  of  his  first  elaborate  antislavery 
publication,  the  "  Slavery"  pamphlet.  In  the  six- 
volume  edition  this  covers  one  hundred  and  fifty- 
three  pages,  embracing  eight  chapters  and  "  Notes." 
His  first  business  was  to  show  that  man  cannot  be 
justly  held  or  used  as  property,  his  second  to  show 
that  he  has  God-given  rights  as  a  human  being,  of 
which  slavery  is  a  gross  infraction  ;  the  next,  "  to 
unfold  the  evils  of  slavery,"  followed  by  "  some  re- 
marks on  the  means  of  removing  it,"  and  others 
on  Abolitionism.  Here,  as  everywhere,  Channing's 
teaching  ran  up  into  the  high  peaks  of  his  con- 
fidence in  the  dignity  of  human  nature  and  the 
fatherhood  of  God.  A  man  "  cannot  be  property 
in  the  sight  of  God  and  justice  because  he  is  a 
rational,  immortal,  moral  being ;  because  created 
in  God's  image,  and  therefore  in  the  highest  sense 

^  He  had  no  immediate  knowledge  of  it,  being  in  Newport  at 
the  time.  A  sharp  taste  of  it  would,  perhaps,  have  stirred  him 
as  it  did  Wendell  Phillips  and  Dr.  Bowditch,  but  generally  the 
most  striking  events  were  less  influential  with  hira  than  his  pro- 
found meditation.  "* 


274  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

his  child ;  because  created  to  unfold  Godlike  fac- 
ulties and  to  govern  himself  by  a  divine  law  writ- 
ten on  his  heart  and  republished  in  God's  Word." 
"  Such  a  being  was  plainly  made  for  an  End  in  Him- 
self. He  is  a  Person,  not  a  Thing.  He  is  an  End, 
not  a  mere  Instrument  or  Means."  The  chapter  on 
"Rights"  keeps  to  the  same  high  ground.  The 
rights  which  are  sacred  above  all  others  are  those 
which  enable  a  man  to  unfold  his  intellectual  and 
moral  nature,  which  as  a  slave  he  cannot  do.  Chap- 
ter iv.,  "  The  Evils  of  Slavery,"  was  that  which 
gave  the  least  pleasure  to  the  slaveholders  and  their 
apologists  and  the  most  satisfaction  to  the  Abolition- 
ists. It  was  a  terrible  arraignment  of  the  peculiar 
institution.  It  was  found  "  radically,  essentially 
evil,"  equally  ruinous  to  master  and  slave,  incapable 
of  improvement,  except  in  the  direction  of  its  sub- 
version. Coming  to  "  Means  of  Removing  Slav- 
ery," the  first  mentioned  was  as  unacceptable  to 
the  slaveholder  as  immediate  emancipation.  He 
"  must  admit  the  great  principle  that  man  cannot 
rightfully  be  held  as  property."  Colonization  was 
deprecated  as  "  a  resolution  to  perpetuate  the  evil 
without  end."  A  system  of  gradualism  was  pre- 
ferred to  immediate  emancipation,  some  of  the  evils 
which  have  attended  the  latter  course  being  clearly 
foreseen.  To  the  objection  that  a  mixture  of  races 
would  result  from  emancipation,  he  said,  "  Can  this 
objection  be  urged  in  good  faith  ?  Can  this  mix- 
ture go  on  faster  or  more  criminally  than  at  the 
present  time  ?     Can  the  slaveholder  use  the  word 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES  275 

*  Amalgamation  '  without  a  blush  ?  "  The  next 
chapter  reversed  the  effect  of  that  on  the  evils  of 
slavery.  The  Abolitionists,  to  whom  it  was  devoted, 
liked  it  least ;  the  proslavery  party  most.  Of  such 
Abolitionists  as  he  knew,  he  said,  "  I  honor  them 
for  their  strength  of  principle,  their  sympathy 
with  their  fellow  creatures,  and  their  active  good- 
ness." He  characterized  the  party  as  "  singularly 
free  from  political  and  religious  sectarianism,  and 
distinguished  by  the  absence  of  management,  cal- 
culation, and  worldly  wisdom."  He  repudiated  the 
assumption  that  they  were  endeavoring  to  stir  up 
slave  insurrection.  He  denounced  the  persecutions 
to  which  they  were  subjected.  He  criticised  "  Im- 
mediate Emancipation  "  as  a  motto  likely  to  mis- 
lead, the  motto  going  farther  than  the  explana- 
tions. But  the  gravamen  of  his  adverse  criticism 
was  the  fierce,  bitter,  and  exasperating  "tone  of 
Abolitionist  agitation."  From  this  criticism  he 
never  receded,  though  assigning  to  it  less  and  less 
relative  importance,  and  arriving  at  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  not  the  form  but  the  substance  of 
the  Abolitionist  attack  on  slavery  that  infuriated 
the  Southern,  and  the  apologetic  Northern  mind. 
Meantime  he  cordially  exonerated  the  majority  of 
Abolitionists  from  blame  upon  this  score,  and  ex- 
cepted "  many  of  their  publications  "  as  "  calm  and 
well  considered,  abounding  in  strong  reasoning,  and 
imbued  with  an  enlightened  love  of  freedom." 

The  two  fires  between  which  Channing  habit- 
ually found   himself  on   antislavery  ground  now 


276  WILLIAM   ELLERY   CHANNING 

made  him  the  object  of  a  lively  fusillade.  Garrison 
summed  up  his  objections  in  the  "  Liberator " 
under  twenty-five  heads,  denouncing  the  book  as 
"utterly  destitute  of  any  redeeming,  reforming 
power,"  as  "  calumnious,  contradictory,  and  un- 
souild ;  "  and,  as  such,  it  "  ought  not  to  be  appro- 
priated by  any  genuine  Abolitionist.  He  that  is 
not  with  us  is  against  us."  But  other  Abolitionists 
were  disposed  to  take  the  proverb  by  the  other 
horn,  "  He  that  is  not  against  us  is  for  us."  Ellis 
Gray  Loring,  than  whom  there  was  no  better 
Abolitionist,  not  one  of  Channing's  parishioners,^ 
but  an  untiring  instigator  of  his  antislavery  spirit, 
which  they,  for  the  most  part,  actively  or  sullenly 
opposed,  was  "  grieved  at  some  few  censures  of  the 
Abolitionists,"  but  added,  "  Nineteen  twentieths  of 
the  book  are  sound  in  principle,  and  I  will  not 
grudgingly  bestow  my  gratitude  and  praise  for 
this  splendid  testimony  to  the  truth."  Halfway 
between  the  extreme  of  Garrison's  criticism  and 
the  opposite  came  John  Quincy  Adams,^  objecting 

^  The  Garrison  Story  reports  him  as  one,  other  authorities  agree- 
ing, but  Mr.  F.  J.  Garrison  sends  me  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  Lor- 
ing's  daughter  which  decides  as  above  and  even  minimizes  the  per- 
sonal relation. 

^  It  is  refreshing-  to  read  of  the  "  Jesuitical  complexion  "  of 
Channing's  discrimination :  it  gives  us  a  pleasant  shock  of  differ- 
ence from  the  traditional  tone,  and  it  is  very  interesting  to  note  the 
development  of  J.  Q.  Adams's  opinion  of  Channing  from  this 
point  forward,  until  it  became  extremely  favorable.  For  an  elab- 
orate Abolitionist  criticism  of  "  Slavery  "  in  the  best  spirit,  see 
Samuel  J.  May's  in  Some  Recollections  of  our  Antislavery  Con- 
Jlict,  pp.  177-185.  It  was,  he  says,  "  a  far  greater  help  to  our 
cause  than  we  at  first  expected,  and  we  look  back  with  no  little 
admiration  on  one  who,  enjoying  as  he  did,  in  the  utmost  serenity, 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  277 

that  slaveholders  could  quote  parts  of  the  "  Slav- 
ery "  as  a  palliation  of  their  system,  "  but  it  is  in 
fact  an  inflammatory  if  not   incendiary  publica- 
tion."    The  most  virulent  assault  upon  the  pam- 
phlet was  that  of  James  T.  Austin,  whose  role 
throughout  the  fourth  decade   of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  that  of  devil's  advocate.     He  was  a 
devout  Unitarian,  a  writer  for  the  "Examiner," 
and  a  distinguished  member  of  the  Brattle  Street 
Society,  sitting  conspicuously  in  the  broad  aisle.^ 
He  put  the  worst  possible   construction   on   the 
pamphlet,  especially  upon  Channing's  indictment 
of  slavery  for  its  encouragement  of  licentiousness. 
Another  point  was  better  made :   "  I  charge  him, 
in  spite   of  his  disclaimer,  with  the   doctrine  of 
INSURRECTION."     For  had  not  Channing  said  that 
"a  human  being  cannot  rightfully  be  held  and 
used  as  property;  no  legislation,  not  that  of  all 
countries  and  worlds,  could  make  him  so"?  "There 

the  highest  reputation  as  a  writer  and  as  a  divine,  put  at  hazard 
the  repose  of  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  sacrificed  hundreds  of  the 
admirers  of  his  genius,  eloquence,  and  piety,  by  espousing  the 
cause  of  the  oppressed,  which  most  of  the  eminent  men  in  the 
land  would  not  touch  with  one  of  their  fingers." 

1  Sic  Dr.  E.  E.  Hale  in  a  private  letter ;  but  Oliver  Johnson, 
Garrison's  excellent  coadjutor,  says  that  he  was  one  of  Channing's 
own  people.  He  married  a  daughter  of  ray  townsman,  Elbridge 
Gerry,  signer  of  the  Declaration,  and  wrote  his  biography.  Hence 
he  could  not  have  spoken  with  the  highest  Boston  authority, 
which  was  first  Federalist,  then  Whig.  A  Democrat  was  a  social 
pariah.  George  Bancroft,  gentleman  and  scholar,  after  a  brilliant 
candidacy  for  the  governorship  of  Massachusetts,  met  a  lady  of 
the  Whig  aristocracy  on  the  street,  and  said  to  her,  "  I  did  not 
find  you  at  home  when  I  called."  "  No,"  she  answered,  "  and 
you  never  will."     I  am  indebted  to  Senator  Hoar  for  the  story. 


278  WILLIAM   ELLERY   CHANNING 

is,  then,"  Austin  argued,  "  no  legal  slavery ;  "  and 
if  no  legal  slavery,  then  why  may  not  the  slave 
"  rise  in  his  strength  or  his  madness,  and  shake 
off  his  chains  ?  "  There  was  nothing  in  the  logic 
of  Channing's  doctrine  to  prevent.  There  was  the 
bias  of  his  peaceful  disposition,  his  dread  of  vio- 
lence. And  it  is  interesting  to  find  him  taking 
comfort  in  that  unresisting  meekness  of  the  negro 
which  Theodore  Parker  set  down  against  him  as  a 
grave  defect,  contending  that  — 

Who  would  be  free,  themselves  must  strike  the  blow. 

That  Channing  was  drawing  closer  to  the  Aboli- 
tionists was  shown  the  next  spring  after  the  pub- 
lication of  "  Slavery  "  by  his  first  appearance  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Antislavery  Society.  He  wished 
to  see  with  his  own  eyes,  and  hear  with  his  own 
ears,  and  judge  accordingly.  If  he  had  gone  sooner, 
he  might  sooner  have  been  disabused  of  some  of 
his  exaggerated  prepossessions.  He  ''  heard  no- 
thing so  exceptionable  as  the  vituperations,  the 
coarse,  unfeeling  personalities  which  too  often  dis- 
honor Congress.'*  He  was  struck  with  the  talent 
of  so  many  plain  people  for  effective  utterance. 
"  I  received  the  impression  which  I  delight  to  re- 
ceive of  the  intellectual  energy  of  the  mass  of  the 
people."  The  most  gratifying  circumstance  was  a 
speech  by  a  colored  man  of  apparently  pure  Afri- 
can blood.  "  I  felt  that  he  was  a  partaker  with 
me  of  that  humanity  for  which  I  unceasingly  thank 
my  Creator."     The  life  of  the  meeting  he  found 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  279 

very  striking.  "  Nothing  was  said  or  done  mechan- 
ically. .  .  .  You  know  by  instinct  whether  you  are 
surrounded  by  life  or  death.  This  body  was  alive. 
I  am  sure  that  if  the  stirrers  up  of  mobs  could 
have  looked  into  the  souls  of  these  Abolitionists, 
they  would  have  seen  the  folly  of  attempting  to 
put  them  down  by  such  persecutions  as  they  can 
bring  to  bear  on  them.  Nothing  but  the  Inquisi- 
tion, the  stake,  the  scaffold ;  nothing  but  extermi- 
nation can  do  the  work."  Abolition  had  most  to 
fear  from  the  indifference  of  people  "  worshipping 
what  they  call  prosperity."  But  "  there  is  one 
ground  for  believing  that  Abolitionism  may  en- 
dure, even  if  unopposed.  With  all  its  faults,  it  is 
founded  on  religious  principle.  It  is  thus  bound 
up  with  the  strongest  principle  of  human  nature. 
It  will  not,  therefore,  be  easily  discouraged  by 
neglect  .  .  .  and  unexpected  events  may  prepare 
a  multitude  for  its  influence."  He  found  nowhere 
such  scepticism  concerning  human  progress  as  in 
Boston.  Hence  the  town's  proslavery  spirit  and 
its  opposition  to  all  antislavery  speech  and  action. 
He  cited  Harriet  Martineau's  experience  in  proof 
of  the  average  social  temper. 

A  distinguished  lady  from  England,  having  every 
moral  as  well  as  intellectual  claim  on  kind  attention, 
was  excluded  from  our  hospitality  in  no  small  degree, 
because  in  an  Antislavery  meeting  she  had  expressed 
the  feelings  which  every  man  and  woman  in  her  coun- 
try is  known  to  partake,  and  in  which  she  only  gave 
utterance  to  the  sentiment  of  the  civilized  world.     Her 


280  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

sex  and  character  did  not  secure  her  from  insult  in  our 
newspapers.-^ 

Under  Channing's  own  roof,  both  at  Newport 
and  in  Boston,  Miss  Martineau  enjoyed  ample 
hospitality,  and  no  contemporary  account  of  him 
was  more  higlily  appreciative  than  that  contained 
in  her  "  Retrospect  of  Western  Travel." 

The  wide  circulation  to  which  the  "  Slavery " 
pamphlet  attained,  and  the  attention  it  received, 
encouraged  Channing  to  another  venture  in  the 
fall  of  1836.  James  G.  Birney,  a  Kentucky  slave- 
holder, who  had  freed  his  slaves  and  set  up  an 
antislavery  paper  in  Cincinnati,  "  The  Philanthro- 
pist," was  disappointed  of  his  hope  that,  by  bring- 
ing his  press  across  the  Ohio,  it  would  be  safe 
from  mob  violence.  A  mob,  instigated  and  led  by 
such  gentlemen  as  had  organized  the  Boston  mob, 
destroyed  the  press  and  drove  the  editor  from  the 
city.  Thereupon  the  word  in  Channing's  heart 
was  like  a  fire  shut  up  in  his  bones,  and  he  was 
weary  with  forbearing  until  he  had  written  a  pub- 
lic letter  (26  pages)  to  Birney,  in  which  he  brought 
an  eloquent  defence  to  the  freedom  of  antislavery 
speech,  while  at  the  same  time  he  read  the  Abo- 
litionists another  lecture  on  the  violence  of  their 
denunciations.  The  Abolitionists  resented  this 
(some  of  them)  as  they  had  resented  their  particu- 

^  Cf.  Harriet  Martineau's  Autobiography.  The  meeting'  re- 
ferred to  was  most  notable ;  the  first  of  the  Women's  Antislav- 
ery Society  after  the  Boston  mob.  Francis  Jackson  offered  his 
house  for  it,  at  the  risk  of  its  destruction,  and  the  women  as- 
sembled with  the  resolvedness  of  martyrs  going  to  the  stake. 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  281 

lar  chapter  in  *'  Slavery."  The  letter  was  copied 
entire  into  the  "  Liberator,"  Garrison  commenting, 
"  A  million  letters  like  this  would  never  emanci- 
pate a  single  slave,  but  only  rivet  his  fetters  more 
strongly."  Yet  the  letter  showed  that  Channing, 
having  "  put  the  first  shovelful  upon  the  earth," 
like  "  the  superior  man  "  of  Confucius,  was  "  going 
on."  It  was  much  less  academic  than  the  ''  Slav- 
ery," much  more  homely  and  vigorous  in  its  style. 
For  the  Abolitionists,  for  all  the  doubts,  it  had 
such  lofty  praise  as  must  have  cost  Channing 
many  "  golden  opinions."  He  had  learned  some- 
thing from  the  reception  which  his  former  book 
had  met :  "  that  the  Abolitionists  are  not  the  only 
people  who  exasperate  the  South.  Can  the  calm- 
est book  be  written  on  slavery  without  producing 
the  same  effect  ?  "  He  held  up  a  mirror,  looking 
wherein  the  Boston  conservative  found  himself  one 
of  "  a  palsying,  petrifying  order,"  "  unwilHng  that 
the  most  enormous  abuses  should  be  touched,  lest 
the  established  order  of  things,  so  propitious  to 
themselves,  should  be  disturbed." 

The  letter  to  Birney  suggests  the  fact  that  dur- 
ing the  last  lustrum  of  Channing' s  life  one  section 
of  the  Abolitionists  was  rapidly  becoming  more  po- 
litical in  its  methods  and  its  aspirations ;  whence 
the  Liberty  Party,  with  Birney  for  its  presidential 
candidate  in  1840,  and  again  in  1844.  Chan- 
ning's  sympathies  were  wholly  with  Garrison  in 
his  opposition  to  this  tendency.  "  Antislavery  is 
to  triumph,"  he  said,  "  not  by  force  or  appeals  to 


282  WILLIAM   ELLERY   CHANNING 

interest,  but  by  becoming  a  living  part  of  the  pub- 
lic conscience  and  religion  [exactly  Garrison's 
view] .  Just  in  proportion  as  it  is  complicated  with 
political  questions  and  feelings  it  is  shorn  of  its 
strength."  The  words  are  Channing's,  the  thought 
is  the  thought  of  Garrison  when  he  says,  "  There 
is  a  class  of  politicans  who  will  use  Abolitionism  to 
rise  by,  but  will  disgrace  it  by  want  of  principle." 
But  it  took  all  kinds  to  make  the  newer  world. 
Channing  had  more  prescience  in  the  matter  of  the 
South' s  threats  to  secede  than  had  Parker  further 
on :  "  On  this  point  the  South  does  not  merely 
bluster,  but  is  in  earnest." 

He  wrote  at  Christmas,  1837,  that  the  fear  of 
dissolving  the  Union  was  the  great  obstruction  to 
Northern  antislavery  progress,  but  he  was  then  al- 
ready upon  record  as  contemplating  such  dissolu- 
tion as  the  less  of  two  evils.  On  the  1st  of  August 
he  had  completed  and  signed  an  open  letter  to 
Henry  Clay  (80  pages,  12mo)  on  the  "  Annexation 
of  Texas."  Of  all  Channing's  contributions  to  the 
antislavery  movement,  this  was  the  best  adapted 
to  its  end.  An  enthusiastic  English  critic  hailed 
it  as  the  best  pamphlet  ever  written.  It  went  far 
to  put  Channing  in  rank  with  the  great  pam- 
phleteers, Defoe  and  Paine  and  Cobbett  and  Vol- 
taire. Garrison's  "Thoughts  on  Colonization," 
though  more  final  in  its  operation,  was  not  more 
happily  conceived.  So  exigent  a  critic  as  Mrs.  Chap- 
man gave  it  credit  for  delaying  the  annexation  of 
Texas  for  a  term  of  years.    No  better  evidence  could 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES  283 

be  afforded  that  Channino;  was  becomino;  "  less  min- 
isterial  and  more  manly."  But  for  its  moral  eleva- 
tion, it  would  have  had  more  the  appearance  of  a 
legal  than  of  a  clerical  document.  It  reviewed  the 
Texan  insurrection  with  energy  and  discrimination 
and  overwhelmed  it  with  a  flood  of  righteous  indig- 
nation. It  proceeded  to  denounce  the  proposed  an- 
nexation as  the  adoption  of  a  career  of  encroach- 
ment, war,  and  crime.  "  The  seizure  of  Texas 
will  not  stand  alone.  It  will  darken  our  future 
history.  It  will  be  linked  by  an  iron  necessity  to 
long-continued  deeds  of  rapine  and  blood."  Much 
as  he  would  deplore  the  dissolution  of  the  Union 
he  could  "  submit  to  it  more  readily  than  to  the 
reception  of  Texas  into  the  Confederacy."  ''  I 
shrink  from  that  contamination.  I  shrink  from  an 
act  which  is  to  pledge  us  as  a  people  to  robbery 
and  war,  to  the  work  of  upholding  and  extending 
slavery  without  limitation  or  end."  Here,  then, 
was  Channing  anticipating  that  part  of  Garrison's 
programme  which  a  few  years  further  on  attained 
to  scriptural  expression,  and  after  the  Compromise 
of  1850,  more  especially  brought  on  him  peculiar 
execration.  But  when  the  annexation  of  Texas 
was  again  imminent,  in  1844,  there  were  a  good 
many  "  conscience  Whigs  "  who  were  prepared  to 
follow  Channing' s  lead.^  He  said,  "  It  seems  to 
me  not  only  the  right,  but  the  duty,  of  the  free 

^  A  Whig  convention  in  Worcester  passed  a  disunion  resolu- 
tion proposed  by  Rev.  Samuel  May  (not  Samuel  J.),  general  agent 
of  the  American  Antislavery  Society.     This  was  in  1844. 


284  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

States,  in  case  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  to  say 
to  the  slaveholding  States,  '  We  regard  this  act 
as  the  dissolution  of  the  Union.  .  .  .  We  will  not 
become  partners  in  your  wars  with  Mexico  and 
Europe,  in  your  schemes  of  spreading  and  per- 
petuating slavery,  in  your  hopes  of  conquest,  in 
your  unrighteous  spoils.'  " 

The  Texan  pamphlet  was  still  damp  from  the 
press  when  Elijah  P.  Love  joy  was  shot  and  killed 
(Nov.  7)  while  defending  his  antislavery  press  in 
Alton,  Illinois.  When  the  news  arrived  in  Boston 
(Nov.  19),  Dr.  Channing,  conversing  with  Samuel 
E.  Sewall,  suggested  a  meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall 
to  protest  against  the  violence  and  murder,  and 
headed  a  petition  of  one  hundred  names  to  the 
mayor  and  aldermen  for  the  use  of  the  hall.  A 
counter-petition  was  sent  in,  and  in  response  to  it 
the  hall  was  refused  to  Channing  and  his  friends. 
Thereupon  he  wrote  a  stirring  "  Appeal  to  the 
Citizens  of  Boston,"  which  was  published  in  the 
"  Advertiser,"  with  opposing  editorial  comments. 
The  fruit  of  the  appeal  was  a  crowded  meeting  in 
the  old  supreme  court  room,  at  which  Dr.  Chan- 
ning was  thanked  by  resolution  for  the  "  eloquent 
and  dignified  vindication  "  of  his  address  and  re- 
quested to  prepare  the  resolutions  for  a  meeting  in 
Faneuil  Hall,  if  the  city  officers  could  be  induced 
to  recede  from  their  refusal.  They  were  so  in- 
duced by  the  re-presentment  of  Channing's  original 
petition  with  many  names  added  to  the  original 
number.     Five  thousand  people  crowded  the  hall 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES  285 

at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Channing's  friend, 
Jonathan  Phillips,  presided,  and  after  the  offering 
of  a  prayer,  Channing  addressed  the  meeting.^ 
His  first  words  were  a  disavowal  of  any  partisan 
character  in  the  meeting.  Such  a  character  would 
have  kept  him  away,  "  But  when  a  great  question 
of  humanity  is  discussed  here,  when  a  mmiber  of 
my  fellow  citizens  meet  here  to  lift  up  their  voices 
against  violence  and  murder,  and  in  support  of 
the  laws  and  the  press,  I  feel  that  my  place  is 
here.^^  The  resolutions  prepared  by  Channing 
were  presented  by  Benjamin  F.  Hallet,  whose 
name  in  my  boyhood  had  come  to  be  a  by-word 
and  a  hissing  on  account  of  his  proslavery  speech 
and  action.  Garrison,  in  a  letter  of  the  follow- 
ing day,  pronounced  them  excellent ;  but  they 
had  not  the  "  birr  and  smeddum  "  which  Garrison, 
a  master  in  this  kind,  would  have  put  into  them. 
George  S.  Hillard,  who  later  fell  so  far  away  as  to 
approve  Webster's  "  great  refusal "  of  March  7, 
1850,  supported  the  resolutions  in  a  speech  the 
effect  of  which  "  was  at  once  elevated  and  sooth- 
ing." There  seemed  to  be  some  danger  that  the 
Cradle  of  Liberty  would  justify  its  name  by  put- 
ting the  assemblage  to  sleep.  But  Attorney-Gen- 
eral James  T.  Austin  saved  the  day.  He  flouted 
the  resolutions  as  "  abstract  propositions,"  accused 
Lovejoy  of  inciting  the  slaves  to  insurrection,  said 

^  One  of  Mrs.  Chapman's  depreciations  of  Channing-  was  that 
he  attended  the  meeting  on  the  urg-ency  of  Ellis  Gray  Loring. 
Such  her  recollection  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  forty  years. 


286  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

that  he  had  "  died  as  the  fool  dieth,"  and  com- 
pared the  mob  to  the  fathers  of  the  Revolution. 
A  tremendous  uproar  followed,  during  which  Jona- 
than PhiUips  said  to  Channing,  "  Can  you  stand 
thunder  ?  "  "  Such  thunder  as  this  in  any  mea- 
sure," answered  the  little  man.  He  sat  as  one 
on  the  seashore  overlooking  a  tempestuous  sea  and 
expecting  momentarily  to  be  submerged,  perhaps 
with  crimson  waves.  Then  struck  for  Wendell 
Phillips  his  first  glorious  hour.  His  speech  reached 
its  climax,  through  a  storm  of  cheers  and  hisses, 
in  words  as  memorable  as  any  that  he  ever  spoke : 
"  I  thought  those  pictured  lips  [those  of  the  por- 
traits in  the  hall]  would  have  broken  into  voice  to 
rebuke  the  recreant  American,  the  slanderer  of  the 
dead.  .  .  .  Sir,  for  the  sentiments  he  has  uttered, 
on  soil  consecrated  by  the  prayers  of  Puritans  and 
the  blood  of  patriots,  the  earth  should  have  yawned 
and  swallowed  him  up."  ^ 

In  its  main   effect,  the   meeting  answered  the 
purpose  which  inspired  Channing' s  action  :  it  vin- 


1  Channing  always  loved  to  recall  that  "  psychological  mo- 
ment," and  to  dwell  upon  the  brilliant  effect  of  Phillips's  voice 
and  manner,  seconding  his  words.  The  speech  was  not  Phillips's 
first,  as  we  are  commonly  told.  He  had  made  several  before  at 
antislavery  meetings  {sic  Oliver  Johnson),  the  maiden  one  in  Lynn, 
March  28,  1837.  Miss  Peabody  (Reminiscences,  p.  360)  writes 
of  Channing's  admiration  for  an  anonymous  reply  to  Austin  by 
Charles  Sumner,  which  was  the  maiden  fleshing  of  his  antislav- 
ery sword.  But  Sumner  sailed  on  the  day  of  the  meeting  for 
Europe,  and  if  he  attended  the  meeting  or  wrote  anything  about 
it,  his  omniscient  biographer,  E.  L.  Pierce,  knew  nothing  of  these 
things. 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  287 

dicated  the  freedom  of  the  press  in  Boston  for  the 
time  being.  It  was  a  signal  for  more  parishioners 
and  friends  to  fall  away  from  him  than  had  before 
done  so.  Had  he  not  taken  a  leading  part  in  the 
defence  of  a  notorious  Abolitionist  who  had  resisted 
unto  death  an  attempt  to  put  a  gag  upon  his  mouth  ? 
But  while  the  Lovejoy  meeting  identified  Chan- 
ning  with  the  Abolitionists,  both  in  the  conserva- 
tive and  the  antislavery  mind,  as  he  had  not  before 
been  identified  with  them,  a  letter  from  him  to  the 
*'  Liberator,"  requiring  their  general  disavowal  of 
Lovejoy's  disposition  to  forcibly  defend  his  rights, 
did  much  to  chill  their  satisfaction  in  his  closer 
sympathy.  Garrison,  more  completely  non-resist- 
ant than  Channing,  had,  in  his  first  editorial  on 
the  murder,  expressed  deep  regret  that  Lovejoy 
had  taken  an  attitude  of  armed  defence.  But  he 
thought,  very  justly,  that  it  was  too  much  for 
Channing  to  demand  that  all  Abolitionists,  non-re- 
sistants, many  of  them,  in  less  and  less  degrees 
than  Channing,  should  repudiate  Lovejoy's  course. 
The  bottom  fact  was  that  Channing' s  disposition 
was  more  peace-loving  and  non-resistant  than  Gar- 
rison's, though  he  had  mental  reservations  in  his 
peace  doctrine  which  Garrison  could  not  entertain. 
That  stern  reformer  often  beat  his  ploughshares 
and  his  pruning  hooks  into  words  that  were  half 
battles. 

Channing  had  no  personal  relations  with  Garri- 
son. This  is  the  most  inexplicable  feature  of  his 
antislavery  career,  and  the  most  unfortunate.    We 


288  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

are  told  that  in  the  early  thirties  Garrison  was  not 
the  inheritor  of  his  present  great  renown,  but  the 
obscure  young  man  of  Harrison  Gray  Otis' s  de- 
scription and  Lowell's  poem,  "  with  no  visible  aux- 
iliary but  a  negro  boy."  But  Channing  did  not 
generally  require  a  trumpet  of  fame  to  be  sounded 
before  the  young  men  to  whom  he  lent  a  sympa- 
thetic ear,  if  they  came  with  any  plea  for  his  humane 
consideration  of  a  just  and  righteous  cause.  Gar- 
rison's cause  was  preeminently  such  for  Channing. 
Moreover,  among  those  holding  up  Garrison's  hands 
were  men  and  women  for  whom  Channing  had  an 
affectionate  admiration,  Mrs.  Child,  the  Chapmans 
and  Sewalls,  Ellis  Gray  Loring,  Samuel  J.  May, 
and  Charles  Follen,  with  many  others,  and  the  won- 
der is  that  he  was  not  curious  to  know  directly  what 
manner  of  man  so  won  their  love  and  trust.  But 
he  was  not,  or  he  checked  the  impulse  as  often  as 
it  stirred  his  heart.  More  than  once  Garrison 
wrote  to  him,  privately,  soliciting  his  cooperation. 
One  of  his  letters  is  preserved  for  us  in  the  Garri- 
sons' "  Story."  It  is  more  scriptural  in  its  style 
than  Channing's  writing,  cast  in  a  heavy  mould, 
but  so  intensely  serious  that  its  (apparent)  failure 
to  elicit  a  response  is  passing  strange.  These  two 
chief  men  of  Boston  in  those  years  —  not  forget- 
ting Webster  —  met  only  once  :  this  in  the  senate 
chamber  of  the  State  House,  March  4,  1836,  at  a 
committee  hearing  of  Abolitionists  in  the  matter  of 
penal  enactments  for  their  supposed  offences  against 
law  and  order.    It  was  a  critical  moment  for  them, 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  289 

and  Channing's  appearance  on  the  scene  was  a 
fresh  sign  of  his  growing  sympathy.  His  shawl 
and  muffler  "  more  express'd  than  hid  him  "  as  he 
walked  the  length  of  the  room  and  coming  to  Gar- 
rison shook  hands  with  him.  "  Righteousness  and 
Peace  have  kissed  each  other,"  said  Mrs.  Chapman, 
making  an  ambiguous  quotation.  Channing  after- 
wards explained  that  he  did  not  know  that  he  was 
addressing  Garrison,  but  that  he  was  glad  to  speak 
with  him.  Harriet  Martineau  was  now  visiting  the 
Channings,  and  Mrs.  Chapman  invited  them  with 
her  to  tea  "  to  meet  Mr.  Garrison."  He  did  not 
come  and  Miss  Martineau  explained  that  the  Gar- 
rison rider  had  defeated  the  biU.  Here  was  a  mys- 
tery that  I  cannot  solve.  Could  they  have  known 
each  other,  it  is  hardly  to  be  conceived  that  either 
would  have  been  much  swerved  by  the  other  from 
his  characteristic  course,  —  Channing  would  still 
have  questioned  Garrison's  severity,  and  his  own 
consistent  individualism  would  have  been  repelled 
by  Garrison's  organized  agitation ;  but  they  would 
have  understood  each  other  better.  Channing 
would  have  discovered  that  Garrison's  severity  was 
as  dispassionate  as  his  own  mildness,  —  that  it 
was  a  deliberately  adopted  method  of  reform,  — 
and  Garrison  would  not  have  had  to  wait  for  the 
Channing  "  Memoir  "  of  1848  to  discover  that  his 
own  strictures  on  Channing  had  been  mistaken  in 
some  essential  particulars.^ 

1  Just  after  Garrison's  criticism  of  the  "  Slavery  "  pamphlet,  and 
not  long  before  the  State  House  meeting,  he  went  to  hear  Chan- 


290  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

The  cup  of  Channing's  antislavery  iniquity  was 
not  yet  fuU.  The  last  years  of  his  life  were  des- 
tined to  be  more  engaged  with  antislavery  thought 
and  work  than  any  of  the  preceding.  Thus,  in 
1839,  he  wrote  under  the  form  of  a  letter  to  Jona- 
than Phillips  (the  open  letter  was  his  favorite 
vehicle  when  he  would  reach  the  general  public 
ear)  a  searching  criticism  upon  Henry  Clay's 
speech  of  February  7  of  that  year;  in  1840  he 
wrote  "  Emancipation,"  a  study  of  West  India 
emancipation  as  bearing  on  our  own  problem ;  and 
in  1842,  the  year  of  his  death,  a  double  pamphlet 
on  the  case  of  the  Creole,  a  slave-ship  whose  cargo 
had  mutinied,  —  a  strange  thing  and  yet  most 
natural ;  and  in  the  same  year  the  swan-song  of 
his  antislavery  career  and  of  his  life,  the  Lenox  ^ 
Address.  I  will  speak  further  of  these  things 
when  I  come  to  his  last  stage. 

It  was  the  manner  of  Channing's  life  to  pile  up 
his  energy  in  special  tasks,  undertaken  and  carried 
out  with  great  deliberation ;  but  the  bulk  and 
weight  of  his  antislavery  work  and  influence  were 
not  by  any  means  exhausted  by  the  half-dozen 
monumental  things  on  which  he  put  forth  his  full 

ning"  preach  and  found  the  sermon  "  full  of  beauty  and  power ; 
worthy  to  be  written  in  starry  letters  upon  the  sky."  He  sat  with 
Mrs.  Chapman,  to  whom  its  privilege  had  been  extended,  in  the 
Hig'g'inson  pew.  Next  day  came  a  note  from  Mr.  Higginson  with- 
drawing the  privilege.  If  Channing  had  heard  of  that,  he  would, 
I  think,  have  invited  Garrison  to  his  house  at  once  and  have 
learned  what  a  kindly  human  face  there  was  behind  the  vizor  of 
the  warrior's  casque.  Mr.  Higginson  was  Colonel  T.  W.  Higgin- 
sou's  uncle.     Epur  si  muove  ! 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES  291 

strength.  He  had  many  correspondents  in  America 
and  Europe,  and  the  burden  of  his  letters  for  ten 
years  before  his  death  was  oftener  slavery  than 
any  other  theme.  As  with  his  letters,  so  with  his 
conversation.  Such  a  friendly  critic  and  adviser 
as  Ellis  Gray  Loring  was  an  inestimable  good, 
where  every  fresh  aspect  of  the  great  anxiety  had 
to  be  considered  with  that  openness  of  mind  which 
Channing  brought  to  questions  of  all  kinds.  Some- 
times he  got  illumination  from  the  dark  side  of 
the  moon,  as  when  a  distinguished  physician,  who 
owned  a  plantation  in  Cuba,  begged  him  to  come 
and  be  his  guest,  and  promised,  as  a  special  in- 
ducement, that  the  slave-whipping  should  be  done 
on  another  plantation  during  his  stay.  Channing 
turned  suddenly  upon  his  heel  and  left  the  room. 
He  could  not  trust  himseK,  we  are  told,  to  express 
his  indignation.  But  he  would  seem  to  have  ex- 
pressed it  very  well.  The  long-drawn  trouble  had 
its  incidents  of  peculiar  painfulness.  Mrs.  Chap- 
man wrote  in  1835  of  a  notice  of  George  Thomp- 
son's speaking  given  "  in  Dr.  Channing's  church, 
where  a  notice  of  our  meetings  has  never  been 
refused  a  reading."  A  little  later  this  could  not 
be  said.  Antislavery  notices  on  their  way  to  the 
pulpit  were  waylaid  and  captured  by  the  standing 
committee  and  never  saw  the  light  of  day  again. 
This  was  a  grief  to  Channing,  and  some  things 
were  as  bitter  to  him  as  gall,  —  for  example,  the 
refusal  of  the  church  for  a  meeting  of  the  Anti- 
slavery  Society,  though  Channing  had  indorsed  the 


292  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

request  as  "  very  agreeable "  to  him  personally. 
Shortly  after,  in  contempt  of  his  wishes,  the  use 
of  the  church  was  granted  to  the  Colonization 
Society.     And  there  was  worse  to  come. 

To  measure  justly  the  amount  and  quality  of 
Channing's  courage  in  his  antislavery  utterance 
and  affiliation  we  must  consider  the  nature  and 
character  of  the  man  and  the  circumstances  of  his 
life.  If  he  had  relished  controversy,  if  he  had 
dearly  loved  a  moral  fight,  if  his  mind  had  been 
easily  made  up,  if  he  had  had  no  fatal  disposition 
to  hear  the  other  side,  if  his  parishioners  and 
friends  had  generally  sympathized  with  his  anti- 
slavery  views  and  had  incited  him  to  speech  and 
action,  if  his  fellow  ministers  had  acted  in  like 
manner,  —  all  that  he  did  on  antislavery  lines 
would  have  been  as  easy  as  for  him  to  turn  his 
hand.  These  would  have  been  the  lines  of  least 
resistance.  The  charges  of  backwardness  and 
timidity  that  were  brought  against  him  could  in 
that  case  be  easily  sustained.  But  Channing  did 
not  love  controversy  and  opposition ;  he  had  no 
gaudium  certaminis.  He  was  not,  I  think,  a  man 
of  natural  courage,  but  one  of  delicate  and  shrink- 
ing flesh,  and  corresponding  mind.  His  sermons 
and  addresses  abound  in  praises  of  moral  courage, 
and  he  exemplified  the  trait  he  praised.  But  it 
was  hard  for  him  to  do  it.  These  praises  were 
exhortations  to  himself  to  keep  right  on.  They 
burned  his  ships ;  they  cut  off  his  retreat ;  they 
made  any  flinching  on  his  part  impossible.     The 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES  293 

things  he  said  and  did  required  of  Mm  a  great  deal 
of  courage,  however  much  or  little  they  might  have 
required  of  a  quite  different  man.^  Wellington 
said  that  men  of  natural  courage  did  not  make  the 
best  soldiers,  but  those  who,  shrinking  from  the 
conflict,  did  not  flinch  because  their  sense  of  duty 
held  them  to  their  work.  Channing  was  a  good 
soldier  of  this  kind. 

Moreover,  nearly  all  the  influences  pressing  on 
him  were  of  a  deterrent  character.  He  was  sensi- 
tive to  the  social  entourage,  and  would  gladly  have 
kept  on  good  terms  with  it,  but  its  average  tem- 
per was  hostile  to  aU  his  higher  aspirations.  One 
may  read  in  Pierce's  "  Life  of  Sumner "  what 
that  temper  was  when  Sumner  was  taking  up 
his  antislavery  work.^  It  had  not  changed  much 
in  a  dozen  years.  With  this  society,  —  "  intel- 
lectual (?),  consolidated,  despotic  over  individual 
thought,  uisisting  on  uniformity  of  belief  in  mat- 
ters which  were  related  to  its  interests,  and  frown- 
ing upon  novelties  which  struck  at  its  prestige,"  — 
Channing,  because  of  his  antislavery  sentiments, 
was  persona  non  grata.     He  was  called  a  Jacobin. 

1  I  have  in  my  possession  Whittier's  autograph  letter  to  Mr.  W. 
F.  Channing',  in  which,  referring  to  Mrs.  Chapman's  depreciation 
of  Channing,  he  says,  "As  to  the  matter  of  courage  and  self-sacri- 
fice very  few  of  us  have  evinced  so  much  of  both  as  thy  father. 
He  threw  upon  the  altar  the  proudest  reputation,  in  letters  and 
theology,  of  his  day.  With  the  single  exception  of  Lydia  Maria 
Child,  I  know  of  no  one  who  made  a  greater  sacrifice  than  thy 
father."     For  entire  letter  see  Pickard's  Whittier,  p.  642. 

^  See,  also,  C.  F.  Adams's  Richard  Henry  Dana,  which  abounds 
in  confirmation  of  the  truth  of  Pierce's  characterization. 


294  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Rumors  were  started  and  believed  that  he  had 
political  ambitions,  that  he  was  about,  to  abandon 
the  ministry  and  go  into  politics.  He  was  not  indif- 
ferent to  his  good  repute,  his  honored  name,  but 
his  antislavery  course  put  these  in  constant  jeop- 
ardy. He  knew  it,  and  he  kept  right  on.  The 
affection  of  his  people  was  much  more  to  him  than 
his  public  reputation,  and  to  do  what  do  he  must 
was  to  forfeit  much  of  this.  His  well-bred  par- 
ishioners, "  gentlemen  of  property  and  standing," 
often  passed  him  on  the  street  without  a  sign  of 
recognition  or  the  most  indiiferent.  His  son  never 
forgot  the  look  of  tender  pain  upon  his  father's 
face  when  such  indignity  was  shown  to  him  upon 
the  Boston  streets.  The  incident  of  the  FoUen 
service  was  typical  of  many  things  that  Channing 
had  to  bear.  That,  in  Wendell  Phillips's  opinion 
(I  had  it  from  his  lips),  measured  the  lowest  deep 
of  Boston's  subserviency  to  the  slaveholding  inter- 
ests.    A  deeper  is  not  easily  conceived. 

Channing's  antislavery  course  had  the  defects 
of  his  qualities,  if  they  were  defects.  To  hear  the 
other  side  was  as  necessary  for  him  as  to  hear  one 
side  only  is  for  the  majority  of  men.  To  "  con- 
sider it  again  "  was  equally  necessary.  His  was 
the  Hamlet  disposition  rightly  understood,  —  a 
holding  back  from  action  in  the  hope  of  reaching 
its  ideal  form.  Hence  he  was  slower  than  some 
others  in  the  adoption  of  radical  measures.  But 
as  compared  with  the  average  temper  of  the  com- 
munity, of  his  co-religionists,  of  his  people,  his  was 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES  295 

so  free  and  bold  that  it  scandalized  the  social  and 
religious  Boston  of  his  time.  Good  people  won- 
dered what  he  would  do  next.  So,  then,  consider- 
ing his  shrinking  delicacy  of  frame  and  mind,  his 
distaste  for  all  rough  contacts,  his  holy  fear  of 
doing  injustice  to  any  person,  or  another's  thought, 
his  conservative  environment,  and  the  sacrifice  of 
reputation,  honor,  and  affection  entailed  by  his 
antislavery  course,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any 
of  his  contemporaries  did  out  his  duty  in  a  more 
steadily  heroic  fashion,  or  at  a  heavier  cost.  And 
it  was  not  as  if  there  was  only  one  way  of  doing 
antislavery  work.  Then,  as  always,  God  "  fulfilled 
himself  in  many  ways."  The  destruction  of  slav- 
ery was,  as  Lincoln  said  of  his  own  part  in  it, 
"a  big  job,"  and  it  required  the  united  strength 
of  many  different  individualities  for  its  accomplish- 
ment. There  were  notes  in  the  great  music  that 
once  seemed  discordant,  but  which  to  our  later 
apprehension  blend  in  a  harmonious  unity.  Among 
these,  that  supplied  by  the  exalted  idealism  of 
Channing  was  one  of  the  purest,  and  contributed 
one  of  the  most  indispensable  and  effective  parts 
of  the  symphonic  whole. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    SOCIAL   REFORMER 

It  would  be  easy  to  misjudge  the  typical  Boston 
Unitarian  layman  of  Channing's  time,  by  dwelling 
too  exclusively  upon  Cbanning's  relation  to  the 
antislavery  reform.  The  typical  layman  was  not 
highly  cultured,  but  he  was,  perhaps,  oftener  col- 
lege bred  than  he  is  now.  He  read  the  "  Daily 
Advertiser,"  which  never  affronted  his  conservar 
tism,  but  flattered  his  prejudices  with  assiduous 
and  prudent  care.  He  read  the  "  Christian  Exam- 
iner "  and  the  London  and  Edinburgh  quarterlies 
to  a  degree  that  Unitarian  laymen  in  this  year  of 
grace  do  not  read  things  of  similar  weight.  He 
wrote  for  the  "  Examiner  "  ^  such  articles  as  that 
of  Nathan  Hale  on  railroads,  and  that  of  James 
T.  Austin  on  Catholic  emancipation.  He  took  a 
more  active  part  in  denominational  affairs  than 
does  the  layman  of  our  time,  and  was  less  abso- 
lutely swamped  in  the  excess  of  clerical  self-confi- 
dence.    To  be  aware  that  he  was  gracious,  kindly, 

^  The  meeting  to  establish  the  Examiner  was  called  by  Chan- 
ning  and  met  in  his  study.  His  name  headed  the  list  of  those 
pledged  to  carry  it  on ;  Professor  Farrar's  came  next ;  Andrews 
Norton's  next.  The  understanding  that  Channing  would  write 
for  it  was  its  best  asset. 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  297 

benevolent,  public-spirited,  charitable,  we  bave 
only  to  think  of  such  institutions  as  the  Massa- 
chusetts General  Hospital,  McLean  Asylum,  His- 
torical Society,  Perkins  Institution  for  the  Blind, 
Charitable  Mechanic  Association,  Boston  Public 
Library  and  Athenaeum,  which  he  originated  or 
fostered.  His  portrait  has  been  drawn  by  Octa- 
vius  Frothingham  with  entire  sincerity.  It  is 
nominally  that  of  Mr.  Frothingham' s  grandfather, 
Peter  C.  Brooks ;  but  a  good  moral  portrait  of 
any  one  of  a  hundred  prominent  Unitarians  of 
1830  would  appear  much  the  same.  Narrow,  gen- 
ial, unimaginative,  friendly,  strictly  honest,  not 
devoid  of  sentiment,  but  inhospitable  to  ideas, 
strong  in  domestic  virtue,  and  with  a  serene  self- 
consciousness  of  doing  pretty  well  upon  the  whole, 
—  such  was  the  Unitarian  layman  who  furnished 
Channing  with  the  social  material  with  and  for 
which  he  had  to  work  towards  higher  social  ends. 
Up  to  a  certain  point  Channing  found  him  trac- 
tile, and  even  ductile  ;  beyond  that,  oppugnant  and 
immovable.  Hence  moments  of  profound  depres- 
sion, and  the  feeling  that  his  labor  had  been  spent 
in  vain.  His  antislavery  temper  was  but  one  man- 
ifestation of  a  moral  elevation  that  was  wearisome 
to  the  typical  layman,  as  if  Channing  were  expect- 
ing creatures  without  wings  to  fly.  Not  moral  ele- 
vation, but  a  Franklinian  sobriety,  a  solid,  stolid, 
steady-going  common  sense,  was  the  Unitarian 
layman's  characteristic  note  in  Channing's  time. 
What  he  would  do  on  lines  of  social  reform  must 


298  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

I    be    done  with  this  kind  of  personal   stuff.     The 

f    Unitarian  layman  would  walk  a  mile  with  him,  or 

twain,  but  when   Channing  invited    him    to  soar 

with  him  into  the  upper  air,  he  said,  "  I  pray  thee 

have  me  excused." 

If  the  later  years  of  Channing's  life  emphasized 
his  engagement  in  social  problems  to  a  degree 
without  previous  correspondence,  it  was  not  quite 
the  same  on  other  lines  as  on  those  of  his  antislav- 
ery  development.  There  the  early  impressions 
remained  strangely  in  abeyance,  until  they  were 
renewed  and  reinforced  by  his  acquaintance  with 
slavery  in  the  West  Indies.  But  from  a  very  early 
period  in  his  ministry  he  conceived  this  as  a  social 
work,  and  might  have  made  "  The  field  is  the 
world  "  the  scriptural  legend  of  its  most  distinctive 
aim.  The  uses  which  he  contemplated  for  his 
new  Berry  Street  annex  in  1817,  were,  as  we 
have  seen,  more  than  parochial.  His  early  inter- 
est in  socialism  connects  with  his  latest  interest 
in  the  Brook  Farm  experiment  without  a  break, 
whatever,  here  and  there,  the  attenuation  of  the 
thread.  The  Richmond  communism  and  the  teach- 
ing of  his  admired  Adam  Fergnison  found  their 
religious  counterpart  and  fulfilment  for  him  in 
the  New  Testament  conception  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  upon  earth.  It  is  nevertheless  true  that 
his  social  interests  tended  to  much  more  careful 
and  elaborate  expression  in  his  culminating  period, 
and  the  vast  concerns  of  war,  intemperance,  crime 
and  its  punishment,  poverty,  education,  social  re- 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  299 

organization  bulked  the   horizon  of  his  mind  in 
ever  more  portentous,  sometimes  appalling  shapes. 

War,  as  Channing  viewed  it,  was  one  of  the 
greatest  social  evils  of  his  time.  From  his  tenth 
year  to  his  thirty-fifth,  the  world  was  full  of  it ; 
the  long  peace  of  exhaustion  followed ;  his  senti- 
ments were  independent  of  the  change.  Doubtless 
they  were  profoundly  nourished  by  the  incidents 
of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  but  the  piping  times  of 
peace  brought  no  abatement  of  his  horror.  The 
same  note  that  sounds  in  his  anti-war  sermons  of 
1812,  1814,  1816,  sounds  with  equal  clearness  in 
his  great  sermon  of  1835  and  his  noble  lecture  of 
1838  ;  incidentally  in  many  intervening  sermons 
and  in  letters  innumerable.  The  Peace  Society  of 
Massachusetts  was  Instituted  in  his  own  parsonage, 
and  of  all  his  personal  tributes,  that  to  Its  secretary, 
the  Rev.  Noah  Worcester,  preeminently  the  peace 
advocate  of  his  time,  has  the  accent  of  profoundest 
admiration.  Fundamental  to  Channlng's  detesta- 
tion of  war  was  the  same  principle  that  was  fun- 
damental to  his  detestation  of  slavery :  "  Let  the 
worth  of  a  human  being  be  felt ;  ...  let  It  be 
understood  that  a  man  was  made  to  enjoy  inalien- 
able rights,  to  improve  lofty  powers,  to  secure  a 
vast  happiness,  and  a  main  pillar  of  war  will  faU." 
It  was  as  a  moral  evil  that  war  must  be  made  to 
cease.  Its  economic  evils,  its  monstrous  cruelties, 
were  a  little  matter  in  comparison  with  the  pas- 
sions it  represented  and  let  loose.  With  General 
Sherman   he   believed  that  "  war  is  hell,"  but  in 


.tr 


300  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

a  deeper  sense.  "  The  field  of  battle  is  a  theatre 
got  up  for  the  exhibition  of  crime  on  a  grand  scale. 
There  the  hell  within  the  human  breast  blazes  out 
fiercely  and  without  disguise.  A  more  fearful  hell 
in  any  region  of  the  universe  cannot  well  be  con- 
ceived. There  the  fiends  hold  their  revels  and  spread 
their  fury."  He  woidd  have  the  soldier's  uniform 
made  as  unattractive  as  the  hangman's,  whose 
business,  he  said,  is  not  more  cruel  or  more  tragi- 
cal. He  would  have  no  military  parades  disfig- 
uring great  civic  occasions.  The  soldier's  courage 
he  depreciated  in  comparison  with  that  demanded 
by  the  exigencies  of  our  everyday  affairs.  Never- 
theless, he  did  not  accept  the  principle  of  non- 
resistance  unreservedly.  Driving  with  Dr.  Farley 
at  Newport,  a  non-resistant  tract  of  S.  J.  May's 
the  subject  of  their  talk,  he  clenched  and  shook 
his  small,  transparent  hand,  and  said,  "  Brother 
Farley,  sometimes  we  raust  fight !  "  But  such  a 
solemn  and  tremendous  concern  is  war,  that  men 
must  not  entertain  the  possibility  of  it  without  full 
conviction  of  its  justice  and  moral  necessity,  nor 
without  unfeigned  sorrow.  Nothing  could  be  more 
horrible  than  the  gayety  of  nations  on  the  eve  of 
wars  that  bring  them  infinite  suffering,  and  a  long 
entail  of  misery,  "  an  army  of  cripples,  an  army  of 
beggars,  and  an  army  of  thieves."  ^  To  the  com- 
mon notion  that  the  able-bodied  citizen  is  bound 
to  fight  in  whatever  conflict  may  be  precipitated 

^  Not  Channing's  phrase,  but  the  translation  of  a  proverbial 
Genuan  rendering  of  what  war  leaves  behind. 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  301 

by  tlie  rashness  of  the  executive  and  legislative 
powers,  Channing  opposed  as  frank  a  negative  as 
to  the  notion  that  the  policy  of  a  government  in 
time  of  war  is  something  sacrosanct,  not  to  be 
criticised  by  any  citizen.  If  called  to  take  part  in  / 
unjust  wars,  he  said,  let  the  patriotic  citizen  delib-j 
erately  refuse.  "  If  martial  law  seize  on  him,  let 
him  submit.  If  hurried  to  prison,  let  him  submit. 
If  brought  thence  to  be  shot,  let  him  submit.  There 
must  be  martyrs  to  peace  as  well  as  to  other  prin- 
ciples of  our  religion.  Let  the  good  man  be  faith- 
ful unto  death." 

The  causes  of  war  and  the  means  for  its  preven- 
tion were  considered  with  an  acumen  that  has  had 
many  pregnant  comments  since  Channing  left  our 
earthly  scene.  It  is  pathetic  to  consider  the  mock- 
ery of  his  hopes  by  the  events  of  recent  years  and 
by  the  national  armaments  that  are  handicapping 
the  wage-earner  of  all  countries,  as  with  a  soldier 
on  each  aching  back.  Particularly  disappointed 
has  been  his  hope  that  freedom  of  international 
communication  and  commerce  would  unharness  the 
war-gods.  That  industrialism  which  was  to  bloom 
with  the  white  flower  of  peace  is  proving  a  hotbed 
of  tiger-lilies,  the  demand  for  new  markets  for  the 
overplus  of  production  breeding  dangerous  rival- 
ries. The  belief  that  "  Trade  follows  the  flag," 
as  practically  construed,  means  that  the  flag  follows 
trade,  dragged  in  the  mire  behind  its  grinding 
wheels.  Nevertheless  to  read  Channing's  arraign- 
ment of  war,  his  praise  of  peace,  is  to  take  heart 


302  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

of  cheer.  In  the  light  of  his  ideals,  those  that  are 
most  engrossing  in  the  present  shrivel  into  paltry 
insignificance,  and  our  sight  is  so  purged  that  we 
can  clearly  see  the  superiority  of  the  better  things 
to  their  pretentious  hoUowness. 

Channing  abounds  in  prophecies  of  thoughts  and 
things  that  have  been  manifested  progressively  in 
the  sixty  years  that  have  intervened  between  his 
death  and  now.  His  theology  is  the  staple  of 
preaching  in  hundreds  of  (nominally)  orthodox 
churches.  His  antislavery  sentiments  were  pro- 
phetic of  Lincoln's  Emancipation  Proclamation. 
But  it  was  on  the  lines  of  social  reform  that  his  an- 
ticipation of  our  later  thinking  and  working  was 
most  strongly  marked,  and  this  nowhere  more  dis- 
tinctly than  in  his  recurrence  to  the  problems  fur- 
nished by  intemperance  and  its  related  pains  and 
penalties.  His  interest  in  these  problems  found 
various  expression.  His  sermons,  his  letters,  and 
his  talk  often  gravitated  to  them  with  a  serious- 
ness that  was  eloquent  of  an  intense  preoccupa- 
tion, but  on  one  occasion  he  put  all  his  best  thinking 
on  the  subject  into  an  "  Address  on  Temperance,'* 
which  was  to  this  subject  what  his  Baltimore  ser- 
mon was  to  his  Unitarian  doctrine.  This  address 
was  delivered  in  the  Boston  Odeon  on  "  the  day 
appointed  for  the  simultaneous  meeting  of  the 
friends  of  temperance  throughout  the  world," 
February  28,  1837.  What  he  should  perhaps 
have  reserved  for  his  climax  he  produced  on  the 
threshold  of   his  elaborate  discourse,  where,  ask- 


THE   SOCIAL  REFORMER  303 

ing,  "  What  is  the  great,  essential  evil  of  intem- 
perance ?  "  he  made  answer,  "  It  is  the  voluntary 
extinction  of  reason.  The  great  evil  is  inward  and 
spiritual.  The  intemperate  man  .  .  .  sins  im- 
mediately and  directly  against  the  rational  nature, 
that  divine  principle  which  distinguishes  between 
truth  and  falsehood,  between  right  and  wrong  ac- 
tion, which  distinguishes  man  from  the  brute." 
His  invariable  gravitation  to  the  spiritual  point 
of  view  fuids  here  another  illustration,  —  and  it  is 
precisely  what  our  general  acquaintance  with  his 
mind  would  lead  us  to  expect.  The  consequences 
of  intemperance  were  vividly  described,  —  the  ter- 
rible disfigurement,  the  physical  wreck,  the  ensu- 
ing poverty,  the  domestic  misery,  but  these  punish- 
ments of  the  sin  were  nothing  in  comparison  with 
the  sin  itself,  the  intellectual  and  moral  degrada- 
tion. "  Honest,  virtuous,  noble-minded  poverty  is 
a  comparatively  light  evil.  What  matters  it  that 
a  man  must  for  a  few  years  live  on  bread  and 
water  ? "  The  meagreness  of  Channing's  diet 
made  for  the  sincerity  of  this  expression  where  a 
doubt  of  this  would  have  been  natural  if  he  had 
had  the  reputation  for  good  living  that  was  enjoyed 
by  some  of  his  clerical  contemporaries.  "  The 
poverty  of  the  intemperate  man,"  he  said,  "  owes 
its  great  misery  to  its  cause.  He  who  makes  him- 
self a  beggar,  by  having  made  himself  a  brute,  is 
miserable  indeed."  -"-^ 

His  next   step  was  to  "  some  remarks  on  the 
extent  of  temptations  to  this  vice."     Here  at  the 


304  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

outset,  he  disclaimed  the  narrow  view  of  these 
temptations  as  peculiar  to  the  uneducated  and  the 
unrefined.  He  declared  men  of  education,  genius, 
sensibility,  to  be  hardly  less  exposed,  and  a  crowd 
of  "  mighty  poets  in  their  misery  dead  "  surged  up 
in  confirmation  of  his  words.  He  passed  to  "  the 
heavy  burden  of  care  and  toil  which  is  laid  on  a 
large  multitude  of  men  ;  "  from  this  to  "  the  intel- 
lectual depression  and  the  ignorance  to  which  many 
are  subjected ;  "  next  to  "  the  general  sensuality 
and  earthliness  of  the  community.  ...  It  is  the  sen- 
suality, the  earthliness  of  those  who  give  the  tone 
to  public  sentiment  which  is  chargeable  with  a  vast 
amount  of  the  intemperance  of  the  poor.  .  .  .  Un- 
ceasing struggles  for  the  outward,  earthly,  sensual 
good  constitute  the  chief  activity  which  he  sees 
around  him."  Concluding  this  part  of  his  address, 
he  named  among  the  causes  of  intemperance  the  love 
of  excitement  and  the  want  of  self-respect  induced 
among  the  poor  and  laborious  by  the  general  state 
of  society.  "Just  as  far  as  wealth  is  the  object  of 
worship,  the  measure  of  men's  importance,  the 
badge  of  distinction,  so  far  there  will  be  a  tendency 
to  self -con  tempt  and  self-abandonment  among  those 
whose  lot  gives  them  no  chance  of  its  acquisition." 
But  it  was  in  that  part  of  the  address  which  dealt 
more  particularly  with  the  prevention  or  cure  of 
intemperance  that  Channing's  ideas  were  most  con- 
spicuously foregleams  of  the  best  thought  upon 
this  subject  that  has  been  developed  since  his  time. 
"  To  save  the  laboring  and  poor  from  intemperance 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  305 

we  must  set  in  action  amongst  them  the  means 
of  intellectual,  moral,  and  religious  improvement." 
"  Music  might  here  be  spread  as  freely  as  in  Ger- 
many, and  be  made  a  hghtener  of  toil,  a  cheerer 
of  society,  a  relief  of  loneliness,  a  solace  in  the 
poorest  dwellings."  Boston's  wasted  wealth  might 
be  so  economized  as  to  build  in  a  few  years  another 
Louvre  and  stock  it  with  pictures  and  statues.  In 
this  connection  Lowell,  the  founder  of  the  Lowell 
Institute,  got  a  good  meed  of  praise.  There  was 
an  earnest  plea  for  a  more  fraternal  intercourse 
between  the  more  and  less  cultivated  people,  and 
at  one  point  the  brave  spirits  of  Arnold  Toynbee, 
Octavia  Hill,  and  their  companions  in  their  noble 
work  seem  to  be  so  near  that  we  can  hear  the 

stairs,  to  Sin  and  Famine  known, 
Sing  with  the  welcome  of  their  feet. 

No  prophet  of  the  Old  Testament  or  New  ever 
lifted  the  veil  of  the  future  and  disclosed  its  secret 
things  more  certainly  than  did  Channing  when  this 
vision  of  the  neighborhood  guild  and  college  set- 
tlement rose  on  his  mind  :  — 

One  gifted  man  with  his  heart  in  the  work,  who  should 
live  among  the  uneducated,  to  spread  useful  knowledge 
and  quickening  truth,  by  conversation  and  books,  by 
frank  and  friendly  intercourse,  by  encouraging  meet- 
ings for  improvement,  by  forming  the  more  teachable 
into  classes,  and  giving  to  these  the  animation  of  his 
presence  and  guidance,  by  bringing  parents  to  an  acquaint- 
ance with  the  principles  of  physical,  intellectual,  and 
moral  education,  by  instructing  families  in  the  means 


306  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

and  conditions  of  health,  by  using,  in  a  word,  all  the 
methods  which  an  active,, generous  mind  would  discover 
or  invent  for  awakening  intelligence  and  moral  life,  — 
one  gifted  man,  so  devoted,  might  impart  a  new  tone 
and  spirit  to  a  considerable  circle ;  and  what  would  be 
the  result,  were  such  men  to  be  multiplied  and  combined, 
so  that  a  community  might  be  pervaded  by  their  in- 
fluence ? 

Another  prophetic  intimation  was  the  plea  for 
innocent  amusements  as  a  means  of  dissuasion 
from  unlawful  pleasures.  His  good  word  for  dan- 
cing is  one  of  the  pleasantest  of  the  surprises  that 
he  has  for  us.  He  would  not  have  it  a  rare  plea- 
sure, reserved  for  great  occasions,  but  an  everyday 
amusement :  — 

No  amusement  seems  more  to  have  a  foundation  in 
our  nature.  The  animation  of  youth  overflows  spon- 
taneously in  harmonious  movements.  Its  end  is  to  re- 
alize perfect  grace  in  motion,  and  who  does  not  know 
that  a  sense  of  the  graceful  is  one  of  the  higher  facul- 
ties of  our  nature  ?  It  is  to  be  desired  that  dancing 
should  become  too  common  among  us  to  be  made  the 
object  of  special  preparation,  as  in  the  ball ;  that  mem- 
bers of  the  same  family,  when  confined  by  unfavorable 
weather,  should  recur  to  it  for  exercise  and  exhilara- 
tion ;  that  branches  of  the  same  family  should  enliven 
in  this  way  their  occasional  meetings ;  that  it  should  fill 
up  an  hour  in  all  the  assemblages  for  relaxation  in  which 
the  young  form  a  part.  .  .  .  Why  should  not  graceful- 
ness be  spread  through  the  whole  community  ? 

To  appreciate  the  daring  radicalism  of  this  ad- 
vice one  should  remember  the  time  when  it  was 


THE   SOCIAL  REFORMER  307 

advanced  and  the  average  temper  of  the  commu- 
nity. Intolerant  of  the  theatre  as  it  was,  he  said, 
"  I  can  conceive  of  a  theatre  which  would  be  the 
noblest  of  all  amusements."  He  would  bring  more 
direct  influences  to  bear  upon  intemperance.  He 
would  discourage  the  social  use  of  ardent  spirits : 
*'  At  the  present  moment,  he  who  uses  them  or  in- 
troduces them  into  his  hospitalities,  virtually  arrays 
himself  against  the  cause  of  temperance  and  hu- 
manity." He  would  discourage  the  sale  of  ardent 
spirits.  But  he  anticipated  the  difficulty  of  enfor- 
cing any  general  prohibitory  law,  and  the  strength 
of  local  option.  "  Law  is  here  the  will  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  the  legislature  can  do  little  unless  sus- 
tained by  the  public  voice." 

Channing's  interest  in  education  was  bound  to 
be  one  of  the  most  engaging  interests  of  his  private 
thought  and  public  speech,  so  largely  did  he  ap- 
prehend, not  only  his  own  work  as  that  of  a  teacher, 
but  that  of  his  great  exemplar,  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
He  broke  with  the  received  tradition,  and  he  an- 
ticipated Bushnell  (perhaps  following  Fenelon)  in 
his  view  of  religion  as  an  education  of  the  soul 
and  not  a  catastrophic  conversion.  But  to  educa- 
tion in  its  narrower  denotation,  as  well  as  in  its 
wider  connotation,  he  gave  much  careful  thought. 
He  magnified  the  office  of  the  teacher  ("  Remarks 
on  Education,"  1833)  as  loftily  as  any  teacher 
could  desire.  "  There  is  no  office  higher  than  that 
of  a  teacher  of  youth,  for  there  is  nothing  on  earth 
so  precious  as  the  mind,  soul,  character  of  the  child. 


308  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

.  .  .  No  profession  should  receive  so  liberal  remu- 
neration." He  compared  the  teacher  with  the 
statesman,  and  affirmed  that  "  to  educate  a  child, 
in  the  true  and  large  sense  of  that  phrase,  is  a 
greater  work  than  to  rule  a  state."  His  ideal  of 
a  right  education  was  so  exalted  that  it  outsoared 
our  present  standards  hardly  less  than  those  of  his 
own  time.  It  was  strictly  an  ideal  of  education, 
not  an  ideal  of  instruction  merely ;  of  leading  out 
and  not  mere  building  in.  It  was  both  intellectual 
and  moral.  "  Every  school  established  by  law 
should  be  specially  bound  to  teach  the  duties  of  the 
citizen  to  the  state,  to  unfold  the  principles  of  free 
institutions,  and  to  train  the  young  to  an  enlight- 
ened patriotism."  Without  definitively  setting  his 
face  against  corporal  punishment,  he  reprobated  its 
abuse  in  terms  that  were  not  less  severe  for  being 
carefully  chosen.  The  cruelty  of  Englishmen  as 
soldiers  and  employers,  he  tentatively  ascribed  to 
the  unrestrained  and  barbarous  use  of  whipping  in 
their  schools.  It  is  surprising  that  his  disapproval 
of  corporal  punishment  in  schools  was  not  more 
absolute.  Pleading  for  the  abolition  of  flogging 
in  the  navy,  he  said,  with  characteristic  idealism, 
"  What !  Strike  a  man  !  "  To  strike  a  child,  if 
not  the  same  offence,  can  hardly  be  a  less.  It  is 
more  than  probable  that  Channing's  intercourse 
with  Horace  Mann  led  him  to  adopt  the  views  of 
that  great  educator  opposing  corporal  punishment 
in  schools.  When  the  "  Examiner  "  article  was 
written  this   intercourse   had  not   begun.     Eight 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  309 

years  later,  1841,  he  wrote  a  letter  showing  what 
good  subjective  reasons  he  had  for  his  anxiety  con- 
cerning the  qualifications  of  teachers  and  their  un- 
sparing use  of  the  rod. 

I  look  back  on  no  part  of  my  life  with  so  much  pain 
as  on  that  which  I  gave  to  school-keeping.  The  inter- 
val of  forty  years  has  not  relieved  me  from  the  sorrow 
and  self-reproach  which  the  recollection  of  it  calls  forth. 
.  .  .  I  was  not  only  a  poor  teacher,  but  what  was  worse, 
my  inexperience  in  the  art  of  wholesome  discipline  led 
to  the  infliction  of  useless  and  cruel  punishments.  I 
was  cruel  through  ignorance ;  and  this  is  the  main 
source  of  cruelty  in  schools. 

The  letter  from  which  this  passage  is  taken  was 
in  the  main  expressive  of  his  satisfaction  and  de- 
light in  the  first  normal  school  at  Lexington,  of 
which  "  Father  Peirce "  of  blessed  memory  was 
the  principal.  In  the  paternal  relation  between 
Mr.  Peirce  and  his  pupils  he  very  specially  re- 
joiced ;  also  in  the  precision  of  his  teaching.  The 
development  of  the  normal  school  system  was  very 
dear  to  him  from  its  first  inception  till  his  death. 
He  expected  from  the  rich  nothing  but  opposition 
to  all  plans  for  universal  education.  (His  distrust 
of  the  rich  seems  to  have  steadily  increased.)  But 
he  thought  they  might  be  conciliated  and  the  poor 
advantaged  by  the  multiplication  of  manual  labor 
schools.  *'  They  are  yet  in  their  infancy,  and  need 
many  experiments  to  determine  the  best  modes  of 
action."  On  the  other  hand,  child  labor  in  facto- 
ries must  not  be  so  construed  as  to  deprive  chil- 


310  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

dren  of  play  and  education,  and  there  must  be 
rigid  factory  inspection  of  the  conditions  of  their 
work.  On  similar  lines  we  find  him  busy  with 
meetings  and  circulars  (of  his  own  writing)  look- 
ing to  the  shortening  of  mercantile  apprenticeships, 
with  provisions  for  the  extension  of  educational 
opportunities  into  the  earlier  business  life.  His 
interest  in  sailors  was  not  confined  to  his  endea- 
vors towards  the  abolition  of  flogging  in  the  navy. 
His  views  of  educational  expansion  included  these 
weather-beaten  toilers  of  the  sea.  It  would,  per- 
haps, be  easier  to  name  the  benevolent  enterprises 
in  which  Dr.  Channing  was  not  a  leading  spirit 
than  those  in  which  he  was.  Father  Taylor's 
Sailors'  Bethel  was  certainly  not  one  of  the  former. 
He  was  Father  Taylor's  first  subscriber  and  his 
unfailing  friend.  His  church  was  the  first  to 
welcome  the  Bethel  minister  to  plead  the  sail- 
or's cause,  and  many  were  the  "  old  sinners  from 
Beacon  Street"  whose  eyes  were  moistened  and 
whose  purse-strings  were  loosened  by  the  strong 
appeal.  It  was  one  of  Channing's  great  delights 
to  go  to  the  Bethel  and  listen  to  Father  Tay- 
lor's sea-born  eloquence  and  watch  the  faces  of 
the  sailors,  mobile  as  the  wind-swept  sea.^  And 
Father  Taylor  had  for  him  a  reciprocal  apprecia- 
tion, saying,  "  He  has  splendid  talents.  What  a 
pity  that  he  has  not  been  educated !  "  A  palpable 
hit.    He  had  not  been  educated  in  Father  Taylor's 

1  For  the  best  account   of  Father   Taylor,  see  Dr.  Bartol's 
Badical  Problems,  pp.  323-348. 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  311 

way.  He  had  never  been  to  sea  except  as  pas- 
senger. He  was  not,  like  Dr.  Ripley's  reprobate 
parishioner,  "  good  at  a  fire."  "  Strip  him  of  liis 
protections,"  said  John  Pierpont,  "  and  he  would 
die."  On  the  contrary,  his  protections  were  the 
sluices  that  drained  off  his  power.  He  knew  it 
to  be  so,  and,  hankering  for  a  less  sheltered  life, 
rejoiced  that  some  of  his  protections  were  being 
broken  down. 

No  account  of  Channing's  interest  in  educational 
reform  would  approximate  completion  that  did  not 
emphasize  his  relations  of  cordial  sympathy  with 
Horace  Mann.  Their  acquaintance  began  in  1833, 
when  Mann  had  already  been  in  the  lower  house  of 
the  Massachusetts  legislature  seven  or  eight  years, 
where  Channing  had  watched  his  exceptionally 
honorable  course  with  increasing  interest  and  sat- 
isfaction. Mann  remained  an  earnest  coloniza- 
tionist  after  Garrison's  "  Thoughts  on  Coloniza- 
tion "  had  converted  many  to  a  saner  mind,  and 
among  these  Dr.  Channing.  In  1834  we  find 
Mann  presiding  over  a  colonization  meeting,  and, 
about  the  same  time,  Channing  urging  upon  him 
that  colonization  was  "  a  delusion  and  a  snare, 
every  freed  slave  creating  a  demand  for  a  new 
slave  to  fill  his  place,"  thus  encouraging  slave- 
breeding  in  the  South  and  an  illicit  slave  trade. 
When,  in  1837,  Mann  sacrificed  his  high  political 
prospects  to  assume  the  secretaryship  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Board  of  Education,  Channing  wrote  him 
a  letter  of  enthusiastic  approbation.  "You  could  not 


312  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

find,"  he  said,  "  a  nobler  station.  You  must  allow 
me  to  labor  under  you  according  to  my  opportu- 
nities. If  at  any  time  I  can  aid  you,  you  must 
let  me  know."  Accordingly  we  find  him  shortly 
going  "  into  the  interior,"  as  he  called  it,  as  far  as 
Taunton,  to  attend  and  address  a  convention  called 
for  the  establishment  of  a  county  school  association. 
Going  to  hear,  he  stayed  to  speak,  pouring  out  his 
mind  in  a  long  extemporaneous  speech,  of  which 
an  admirable  report  has  been  preserved.  On  the 
same  principle  that  he  would  educate  one,  he  would 
educate  all.  A  common  nature  demanded  common 
schools,  a  common  education.  He  had  a  patient 
ear  for  every  enterprise  looking  to  an  improved 
education,  but  also  had  his  hesitations  and  with- 
drawals. He  dreaded  the  political  bias,  and  had 
good  reason  to  do  so,  as  the  event  has  shown.  To 
Dr.  Dewey,  interested  in  a  particular  scheme,  he 
wrote,  "  It  grieves  me  that  I  am  perpetually  taking 
views  which  prevent  my  cooperation  with  others." 
He  was  much  interested  in  Bronson  Alcott's  fine 
experiment,  but  he  had  his  doubts  "as  to  the  de- 
gree to  which  the  mind  of  the  child  should  be 
turned  inward.  .  .  .  The  [young]  soul  is  somewhat 
jealous  of  being  watched ;  and  it  is  no  small  part 
of  wisdom  to  know  when  to  leave  it  to  its  impulses 
and  when  to  restrain  it."  He  would  respect  the 
passion  of  the  young  for  outward  things,  and  not 
nourish  in  them  an  exclusive  spirituality.  Chan- 
ning's  breadth  of  view,  his  freedom  from  one- 
sidedness,  is  conspicuous  in  his  relation  to  all  social 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  313 

matters.  He  conceived  of  penal  legislation  and 
the  treatment  of  criminals  as  educational  matters, 
and  his  views  upon  these  subjects  anticipated  the 
wiser  apprehensions  of  our  new  penology.  He  kept 
in  touch  with  the  prison  reformers  in  this  country  y 
and  abroad,  reading  their  publications,  correspond-  \ 
ing  with  them,  studying  their  methods.  In  1832 
he  was  admitted  by  special  privilege  to  the  cells 
of  the  condemned  murderers  in  the  Philadelphia 
penitentiary,  and  his  talk  with  them  confirmed 
his  faith  in  the  inextinguishable  spark  of  good  in 
every  soul.^  He  opposed  solitary  confinement,  but 
favored  the  isolation  of  all  prisoners  from  each 
other  and  their  subjection  to  good  influences.  He 
opposed  the  monstrous  cruelty  of  compulsory  idle- 
ness in  prisons,  little  dreaming  to  what  extent  this 
would  be  conceded  to  "  organized  labor  "  by  our 
more  recent  legislation,  single-eyed  to  the  next 
voting  day.  He  would  have  no  vindictive  and 
exemplary  punishments,  but  a  prison  discipline 
looking  exclusively  to  education,  industry,  and 
reformation. 

It  was  said  of  Lessing  that  to  go  back  to  him  is 
to  go  forward,  and  this  might  be  said  of  Channing 
in  respect  to  many  things ;  most  notably  in  respect 
to  his  hopes  and  aspirations  for  those  whom  he 
called  "  the  laboring  classes  " —  too  proud  a  desig- 
nation for  the  wage-earners  to  arrogate  it  to  them- 

1  "  The  only  bad  influences  which  I  saw  came  from  the  preach- 
ing, and  religious  tracts.  .  .  .  Truly  this  plague  of  Calvinism, 
like  the  vermin  inflicted  on  Egypt,  finds  its  way  everywhere." — 
Letter  of  April  10,  1830. 


314  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

selves,  or  for  it  to  be  conceded  them  by  those  whose 
work  is  salaried,  or  meets  with  an  irregular  re- 
ward.i  Two  lectures,  "  Self-Culture  "  (1838),  and 
"  The  Elevation  of  the  Laboring  Classes  "  (1840), 
were  the  most  eloquent  and  elaborate  expression 
of  these  hopes  and  aspirations.  Mr.  Salter  writes 
that  "there  are  few  things  more  stirring  in  the 
whole  hterature  of  social  reform  "  than  the  second 
of  these  addresses,  and  the  praise  is  well  deserved. 
But  it  is  no  "lonely  splendor"  that  these  two  ad- 
dresses enjoy.  They  lift  themselves  in  vaster  bulk 
than  any  other  social  utterances  of  C banning,  but 
not  to  a  greater  height  than  many  of  his  letters, 
sermons,  and  other  writings.  Like  many  other 
things  that  Channing  did,  they  are  hard  to  classify, 
so  common  was  it  for  him  to  make  a  clean  breast 
of  his  whole  social  and  spiritual  philosophy  on 
every  occasion  that  furnished  him  with  a  great 
opportunity.  I  began  to  write  of  them  when  writ- 
ing of  his  educational  work,  and  they  would  not 
have  been  out  of  place  under  that  head.  But,  as 
delivered,  one  of  them  in  a  course  of  "  Franklin 
Lectures "  designed  for  "  working  people,"  and 
the  other  before  the  Mechanic  Apprentices'  Library 
Association,  their  fittest  place  seems  at  the  point 

^  The  best  study  of  Channing's  industrial  sociolog-y  and  social 
reform  work  is  that  of  William  M.  Salter,  now  of  the  Chicago 
Ethical  Society,  which  first  appeared  in  the  Unitarian  Review, 
March,  1888,  and  afterward  in  a  pamphlet,  Channing  as  a  Social 
Meformer.  This  aspect  of  Channing,  he  says,  still  waits  its  due 
appreciation  :  "  My  conviction  is  that  Channing  was  ahead,  not 
only  of  his  own  time,  but  ours." 


THE   SOCIAL  REFORMER  315 

of  Clianning's  engagement  in  social  matters,  to 
which  I  have  now  come.  Differing  in  their  details 
and  manner  of  treatment,  one  and  the  same  spirit 
breathes  through  both  of  these  great  expressions 
of  Channing's  interest  in  social  and  industrial  re- 
form. Nowhere  does  his  characteristic  faith  in 
human  nature  lift  itself  into  a  purer  air,  or  sing  a 
braver  song.  That  the  ground  of  a  man's  culture  j 
lies  in  his  nature,  not  in  his  calling,  is  the  central 
note,  and  the  first  means  of  self-culture  is  the 
solemn  and  deliberate  determination  to  make  the 
most  and  the  best  of  this  nature.  Men  are  not  to 
cultivate  themselves  in  order  to  be  rich,  but  in  order 
to  be  men.  But  while  going  far  in  the  assertion 
of  man's  independence  of  his  economical  condition, 
Channing  stopped  short  of  recommending  indiffer- 
ence to  this.  "  Improve  your  lot,"  he  said  ;  "  mul- 
tiply comforts  and,  stiU  more,  get  wealth,  if  you 
can,  by  honorable  means,  and  if  it  does  not  cost 
too  much  .  .  .  Only  beware  lest  your  motives 
sink  as  your  condition  improves."  To  the  control 
of  animal  appetites  he  devoted  some  admirable 
pages,  with  the  emphasis  on  temperance,  and  a 
stouter  advocacy  of  prohibitory  legislation  than 
that  of  the  great  "  Temperance  "  address.  What 
he  wrote  of  the  choice  of  books  is  much  more  diffi- 
cult of  application  now  than  it  was  then,  but  still 
"  the  few  large  stars "  shed  their  unfailing  light, 
and  shame  the  fire-balloons  that  are  distended  only 
to  collapse  and  leave  no  trace.  We  must  let  no 
book  or  man,  he  said,  warp  us  from  our  own  de- 


316  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

liberate  opinion.  "  Even  the  influence  of  superior 
minds  may  harm  us  by  bowing  us  to  servile  acqui- 
escence, and  damping  our  spiritual  activity."  There 
are  noble  passages  on  a  man's  idealization  of  his 
work  through  its  embodiment  of  justice  and  bene- 
volence, every  blow  on  the  hot  iron  shaping  not 
only  that,  but  the  workman's  malleable  soul.  "  It 
is  strange,"  he  said,  "  that  laboring  men  do  not 
think  more  of  the  vast  usefulness  of  their  toils." 
He  found  in  party  spirit  one  of  the  worst  enemies 
of  self-culture.  His  early  hatred  of  this  spirit  was 
engendered  in  the  fierce  heats  of  Jeffersonian  and 
Federalist  recrimination,  but  it  was  conceived  so 
rationally  that  it  suffered  no  abatement  in  less 
stirring  times.  "  Human  nature,"  he  said,  "  seems 
incapable  of  a  stronger,  more  unrelenting  passion. 
.  .  .  Truth,  justice,  candor,  fair  dealing,  sound 
judgment,  self-control,  and  kind  affections  are  its 
natural  and  perpetual  prey."  Concluding,  he 
hailed,  as  the  happiest  feature  of  the  age,  the  pro- 
gress of  the  mass  of  the  people  in  self-respect,  in- 
telligence, and  all  the  comforts  of  life,  while  still 
only  a  beginning  had  been  made  on  the  right  road. 
The  conclusion  is  not  to  be  escaped  that,  as 
Channing  drew  on  to  the  end  of  his  career,  his 
tf  hopes  for  the  improvement  of  society  centred  more 
'in  the  poorer  than  in  the  better  classes.  As  Paul 
turned  to  the  Gentiles,  so  he  to  the  wage-earners 
when  he  found  the  rich  and  cultured  unable  or 
unwilling  to  translate  his  spiritual  message  into  the 
terms  of  social  justice.    It  was  with  him  and  these 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  317 

as  with  tiie  prophet  of  old  time  and  those  to  whom 
he  preached  in  vain :  "  And  lo,  thou  art  unto  them 
as  a  very  lovely  song  of  one  who  hath  a  pleasant 
voice  and  can  play  well  on  an  instrument,  for  they 
hear  thy  words  and  they  do  them  not."  There  was 
much  complaint  that  he  did  not  preach  "  personal 
religion"  so  much  as  formerly,  but  preached  the 
need  of  social  reformation  more.  Nor  can  it  be 
denied  that  the  pain  and  stress  of  this  need  were 
on  him  hard  and  sore.  The  accusation  that  he 
brought  against  the  existing  order  was  no  mush  of 
indeterminate  words  and  phrases.  "  Society,"  he 
said,  ''  has  not  gone  forward  as  a  whole.  .  .  .  The 
elevation  of  one  part  has  been  accompanied  with 
the  depression  of  the  other.  .  .  .  Within  the  city 
walls  which  enclose  the  educated  and  refined,  you 
meet  a  half-civilized  horde,  given  up  to  deeper 
degradation  than  the  inhabitants  of  the  wilder- 
ness." He  found  the  multitude  "  oppressed  with 
drudging  toil,"  that  their  labor  was  "  a  badge  of 
inferiority,"  "  that  wealth  forms  a  caste,"  that  with 
the  degradation  of  the  laborer's  condition,  there 
was  "  degradation  of  mind  and  heart."  He  found 
"  the  great  features  of  society  hard  and  selfish," 
and  Christianity  "  so  at  war  with  the  present  con- 
dition of  society,  that  it  can  hardly  be  spoken  and 
acted  out  without  giving  great  offence."  "  The 
cry  is,"  he  wrote  in  1835,  "  that  '  property  is  inse- 
cure, law  a  rope  of  sand,  and  the  mob  sovereign.' 
The  actual  present  evil,  —  the  evil  of  that  worship 
of  property  which  stifles  all  the  nobler  sentiments, 


318  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

and  makes  men  property,  —  this,  nobody  sees :  the 
appearances  of  approaching  convulsions  of  pro- 
perty, —  these  shake  the  nerves  of  men  who  are 
willing  that  our  moral  evils  should  be  perpetuated 
to  the  end  of  time,  provided  their  treasures  be 
untouched."  On  the  other  hand,  his  view  of  the 
distribution  of  property  was  optimistic  even  for 
the  time  when  he  accepted  it ;  or,  if  it  was  not  so, 
how  remarkable,  how  incalculable,  has  been  the 
change !  "  The  vast  and  ever  growing  property 
of  the  country  "  he  declared  to  be  "  diffused  like 
the  atmosphere."  "  The  wealth  of  the  rich  is  as 
a  drop  in  the  ocean ;  and  it  is  a  well-known  fact 
that  those  men  among  us  who  are  noted  for  their 
opulence  exert  hardly  any  political  power."  It  is 
very  different  now,  and  it  is  interesting  to  imagine 
how  Channing's  powers  of  characterization  and 
denunciation  would  have  met  a  state  of  things  like 
that  which  now  prevails.  His  phrases  do  not  seem 
inadequate  to  this  state,  and,  coming  upon  them 
out  of  their  connection,  we  might  well  imagine 
them  intended  to  describe  its  arrogant  prosperity 
over  against  the  pitiful  submergence  of  many  mil- 
lions of  our  civilized  communities  below  the  poverty 
line.^ 

The  situation,  as  Channing  conceived  it,  was  quite 
bad  enough,  and  his  dealing  with  it  frequently  took 
on  a  revolutionary  tone  which  would  be  accounted 

1  Some  7,000,000  in  England  and  Wales,  out  of  25,000,000 ! 
We  are  doing  better  in  America,  but  how  much,  and  for  how 
long?    See  B.  S.  Rowntree's  Study  of  Town  Life,  190L 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  319 

dangerous,  if  not  anarchistic,  by  those  of  our  own 
time  who  scent  Vese  majeste  in  every  honest  criti- 
cism of  public  men  and  current  policies.  That 
lofty  indignation  of  which  Channing  was  so  easily 
capable  and  which  has  been,  not  unfitly,  called 
"  the  wrath  of  the  lamb,"  found  nowhere  freer 
scope  than  here.  To  be  surprised  at  Channing's 
capacity  for  it  is  simply  not  to  know  what  manner 
of  spirit  he  was  of.  The  social-industrial  status 
was  for  him  frankly  imjiossible  :  it  must  somehow 
be  reformed.  *'  Important  changes  must  take  place 
in  the  state  of  the  laboring  classes ;  they  must 
share  more  largely  in  the  fruits  of  their  toil  and 
in  means  of  improvement."  "  I  am  a  leveller  ; 
but  I  would  accomplish  my  object  by  elevating  the 
low,  by  raising  from  a  degrading  indigence  and 
brutal  ignorance  the  laboring  multitude."  He 
would  do  it  with  their  help,  mainly  by  that ;  not 
from  above,  but  from  beneath,  the  elevating  power. 
The  revolutionary  bogy  had  no  terrors  for  his 
mind.  He  was  well  over  his  misunderstanding  of 
the  French  Revolution.  He  had  come  to  know  that 
it  was  worth  all  it  cost ;  that  the  Terror  was  an  in- 
cident of  a  great  forward  stride ;  that  the  ideas  of 
'93  had  fallen  into  the  ground  and  died  only  to 
bear  much  fruit.  The  revolution  of  1830  he  hailed 
with  pure  delight.  He  had  no  patience  with  young 
Harvard's  deadness  to  the  event.  "  You  seem  to 
be  the  only  young  man  that  I  know,"  said  his 
young  Harvard  friend.  "  Always  young  for  lib- 
erty !  "  he  cried  with  passionate  warmth.     He  car- 


320  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

ried  this  spirit  into  the  pulpit  and  fluttered  the 
congregation  with  such  manly  utterance  as  this : 
"  I  see  ...  in  the  revolutionary  spirit  of  our 
times,  the  promise  of  a  freer  and  higher  action  of 
the  human  mind,  —  the  pledge  of  a  state  of  society 
more  fit  to  perfect  human  beings."  Again,  in  the 
same  discourse :  "  Men  are  now  moved  not  merely 
by  physical  wants  and  sufferings,  but  by  ideas,  by 
principles,  by  the  conception  of  a  better  state  of 
society,  under  which  the  rights  of  human  nature 
will  be  recognized  and  greater  justice  be  done  to 
the  mind  in  all  classes  of  the  community."  No 
wrongs  done  to  the  body  appealed  to  him  as  did 
the  starved  and  stunted  mind.  He  declared  that 
the  old  spells  were  broken,  the  old  reliances  gone. 
"  Mightier  powers  than  institutions  have  come  into 
play  among  us,  —  the  judgment,  the  opinions,  the 
feelings  of  the  many ;  and  all  hopes  of  stability 
which  do  not  rest  on  the  progress  of  the  many 
must  perish."  "  The  present  selfish  dis-social  sys- 
tem must  give  way."  "  No  man  has  seized  the 
grand  peculiarity  of  the  present  age  who  does  not 
see  in  it  the  means  and  material  of  a  vast  and 
beneficent  social  change  ;  .  .  a  mighty  revolution 
not  to  stop  until  new  ties  shall  have  taken  the 
place  of  those  which  have  hitherto  connected  the 
human  race."  "  I  have  no  fear  of  revolutions.  .  .  . 
What  exists  troubles  me  more  than  what  is  to 
come."  "  We  must  suffer  and  we  ought  to  suffer. 
Society  ought  to  be  troubled,  to  be  shaken,  yea, 
convulsed,  until  its  solemn  debt  to  the  poor  and 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  321 

Ignorant  is  paid."  It  may  be  imagined  that  these 
dislocated  sentences  exaggerate  Channing's  reform- 
atory, not  to  say  revolutionary,  spirit.  On  the 
contrary  they  minimize  its  force.  They  are  much 
more  impressive  as  they  are  carried  along  in  the 
general  stream  of  his  discourse  and  ride  its  buoy- 
ant waves.  The  fact  that  they  are  taken  from 
many  different  sources  —  sermons,  letters,  and 
addresses  —  proves  that  they  signify  no  passing 
mood,  but  the  continuous  temper  of  his  mind. 

But  although  the  vrord  "  revolution "  did  not 
impress  Channing  as  too  large  a  word,  or  too  por- 
tentous, to  express  the  measure  and  the  quality  of 
the  social  change  which  he  felt  must  surely  come 
to  pass,  and  he  contemplated  the  certain  revolution 
as  "  silent  or  bloody,"  all  the  strength  of  his  peace- 
loving  nature  and  his  peacemaking  principles  was 
on  the  side  of  a  peaceful  solution,  if  by  any  pos- 
sibility that  could  be  made  to  meet  the  exigency  of 
the  case.  When  in  1841  Orestes  Brownson  seemed 
to  recommend  an  immediate  death  grapple  of  the 
rich  and  poor,  Channing,  who  had  deeply  sympa- 
thized with  his  interest  in  the  "  masses,"  —  "  an 
odious  word,  as  if  spiritual  beings  could  be  lumped 
together  like  heaps  of  matter,"  —  took  grave  of- 
fence and  pronounced  his  article  at  once  "  shock- 
ing and  absurd."  On  the  other  hand,  he  found 
nowhere  so  little  ground  for  hope  to  build  upon 
as  "  among  what  are  called  the  '  better  classes.' 
These  are  always  selfishly  timid,  and  never  origi- 
nate improvements  worthy  of  the  name."    In  their 


322  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

"  want  of  faith  in  improvement "  lie  found  "  the 
darkest  symptom"  of  the  time,  —  "that  frigid 
tameness  of  mind  which  confounds  the  actual  and 
possible,  which  cannot  burst  the  shackles  of  custom, 
which  never  kindles  at  the  thought  of  great  improve- 
ments of  human  nature,  which  is  satisfied  if  religion 
receives  an  outward  respect  and  never  dreams  of 
enthroning  it  in  men's  souls."  To  whom,  then, 
should  we  go  for  the  initial  energy  of  the  new 
social  order  ?  To  those  working,  however  humbly 
or  obscurely,  for  "  the  spread  of  intellectual  and 
moral  power  among  all  classes  and  the  union  of  all 
by  a  spirit  of  brotherhood."  Various  forms  of  as- 
sociation and  cooperation  attracted  him,  as  at  least 
experiments  that  were  well  worth  the  trial.  Among 
these  were  Brook  Farm  and  the  Mendon  "  Frater- 
nal Community."  He  wrote  to  Adin  Ballou,^  the 
noble  founder  of  *'  Hopedale,"  "  I  have  for  a  very 
long  time  dreamed  of  an  association  in  which  the 
members,  instead  of  preying  on  each  other,  .  .  . 
should  live  together  as  brothers,  seeking  one  an- 
other's elevation  and  spiritual  growth."  At  the 
same  time  he  foresaw  the  difficulties  which  were 
developed  at  Hopedale,  Brook  Farm,  in  the  North 
American  Phalanx,  and  other  similar  experiments. 
"  There  is  danger  of  losing  in  such  establishments 
individuality,  animation,  force,  and  enlargement  of 
mind."     In  the  event  those  who  were  ground  to- 

^  Rev.  W.  H.  Fisb,  now  extremely  old,  -writes  me  of  his  visit  to 
Channing  at  Newport  and  of  Channing's  enthusiastic  sympathy 
with  his  interest  in  the  Hopedale  work. 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  323 

gether  in  these  social  mills  did  more,  perhaps,  to 
sharpen  each  others'  angles  than  to  rub  them  down, 
but  the  associations  withered  as  the  individual  was 
more  and  more.  "  One  of  my  dearest  ideas  and 
hopes,"  he  wrote,  "  is  the  union  of  labor  and  cuU 
ture^''  and  he  found  "  Mr.  Alcott,  hiring  himself 
out  for  day  labor,  and  at  the  same  time  living  in  a 
region  of  high  thought,  the  most  interesting  object 
in  our  commonwealth."  He  was  more  interesting 
than  practical.  "  Orpheus  in  the  '  Dial ' "  was  really 
more  effective  than  "Orpheus  at  the  plough,"  if 
less  to  Channing's  mind.  The  surmise  of  an  un- 
friendly critic  that  Alcott's  farming  ^  would  pro- 
duce "  very  small  potatoes  "  was  more  than  justi- 
fied on  the  material  side.  Yet  such  a  failure  was 
more  honorable  than  some  of  our  notorious  suc- 
cesses. 

Far  more  justly  entertained  than  his  interest  in 
Mr.  Alcott's  transcendental  farming  was  Chan- 
ning's interest  in  his  friend  Tuckerman's  Ministry 
at  Large  and  the  general  work  of  the  Benevolent 
Fraternity  of  Churches.^    This  work  did  not  origi- 

1  For  the  best  account  of  it  see  Louisa  M.  Alcott's  Transcenden- 
tal Wild  Oats. 

^  See  Channing's  eulogy  on  Dr.  Tuckerman  in  Works,  and 
sketch,  with  contributory  letters,  in  Sprague's  Unitarian  Pulpit, 
pp.  345-356.  Born  two  years  before  Channing,  he  was  his  Har- 
vard classmate  and  his  most  intimate  friend  after  the  college 
days,  Jonathan  Phillips  possibly  excepted.  After  a  ministry  of 
twenty-five  years  in  Chelsea,  he  came  to  Boston,  and  found  a  place 
prepared  for  him  by  an  "Association  for  Religious  Improve- 
ment," which  had  originated  in  1822,  and  had  owed  much  to  the 
fostering  care  of  Henry  Ware,  Jr.,  of  the  Second  Church.     (See 


324  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

nate  with  him,  nor,  strictly  speaking,  with  Dr. 
Tuckerman,  but  it  was  Dr.  Tuckerman  who  made 
it  so  efficient  that  it  attracted  wide  attention  both 
in  this  country  and  abroad,  and  furnished  the  in- 
spiration and  the  power  of  the  best  work  done  for 
the  elevation  of  the  poor  for  a  long  time  after 
Channing  and  Tuckerman  had  put  o£P  the  encum- 
bering frailty  of  the  fleshly  screen.  The  good 
work  still  goes  on.  Channing  furnished  a  useful 
balance-wheel  to  Tuckerman' s  impulsive  disposi- 
tion. These  met  every  week  with  Jonathan  Phil- 
lips to  talk  over  the  work.  Channing  was  not 
easily  satisfied  with  its  results.  He  wrote  Dr. 
Tuckerman  in  1835,  "As  yet,  the  ministry  has 
done  little  for  the  poor  and  wiU  do  little,  if  man- 
aged on  the  old  plan.  .  .  .  You  have  done  good 
by  approaching  the  poor  with  more  sympathy  and 
respect  and  more  of  the  feeling  of  brotherhood 
than  had  been  expressed  before.  .  .  .  But  what  I 
want  is  that  you  should  substitute  for  vague,  con- 
ventional, hackneyed  forms  of  speech,  distinct,  sub- 
stantial truths,  which  the  intellect  may  grasp  and 
which  answer  to  the  profoundest  wants  of  the  spir- 
itual nature.  ...  If  the  ministry  shall  degenerate 
into  a  formal   service  or  be   carried  on   with  no 

Seventy-Fifth  Anniversary  of  the  Founding  of  the  Ministry  at  Large.) 
The  birthday  of  the  Ministry  at  Large  was  December  3,  1826, 
and  Dr.  Tuckerman  was  its  most  representative  agent  for  the  re- 
mainder of  his  life,  though  from  1833  onward  his  efficiency  was 
much  impaired  by  broken  health.  Born  January  18,  1778,  he 
died  April  20,  1840,  in  Havana,  whither  he  had  gone  in  the  vain 
hope  of  bettering  his  health. 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  325 

more  zeal  than  the  common  ministry,  it  will  come 
to  nothing."^  Hence  his  interest  in  Brownson's 
"  Society  of  Union  and  Progress  "  and  his  disap- 
pointment in  its  miscarriage.  Hence  his  resolve, 
at  one  time,  to  establish  a  Free  Church  in  which 
he  might  utilize  his  strength  for  the  improvement 
of  wage-earners  and  assist  their  mutual  co-opera- 
tion, but  too  little  strength  remained  for  such  a 
task. 

A  sermon-pamphlet  lies  before  me,  browned  with 
age  and  mildewed  here  and  there.  The  sermon 
was  preached  by  Dr.  Tuckerman  at  the  ordina- 
tion of  Messrs.  Barnard  and  Gray,  November  2, 
1834.  Dr.  Francis  Parkman,  the  clerical  humor- 
ist, was  among  those  who  heard  it,  and  after  the 
service  he  said,  "  Brother  Tuckerman,  your  sermon 
was  too  long.  It  tired  me.  Did  n't  it  tire  you. 
Dr.  Channing  ?  "  Here  was  a  net  spread  in  sight 
of  the  bird,  but  the  bird  was  not  to  be  so  easily  en- 
snared. " /was  tired,"  said  Dr.  Channing,  "before 
Brother  Tuckerman  began."  ^  The  sermon  required 
an  hour  and   a  half  for  its  delivery,  and  covers 

1  Memoir,  iii.  51.  This  passage  will  not  be  found  in  the  one- 
volume  edition,  in  which,  quite  unaccountably,  ten  pages  of  the 
earlier  edition  have  been  omitted  preceding  the  letter  to  Dr.  Fol- 
len,  dated  March  6, 1837,  on  page  481.  There  are  many  other 
omissions,  some  of  them  important,  all  unfortunate.  See  ii.  390- 
397 ;  400-402 ;  414,  415 ;  416-423 ;  425-431. 

2  He  was  not  so  tired  after  the  sermon  but  that  he  could  give 
a  charge  of  one  third  its  length,  one  of  the  strongest  of  a  kind 
which  reached  its  climax  in  his  charge  to  Charles  T.  Brooks  at 
Newport,  and  later,  with  some  changes,  to  John  S.  Dwight  at 
Northampton.     See  Works,  one-volume  edition,  pp.  88,  283. 


326  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

thirty-six  octavo  pages.  But  few  sermons  of  that 
time  were  better  justified  in  the  demand  they  made 
upon  the  public  mind.  "It  is  difficult,"  says  Dr. 
Francis  G.  Peabody,  "to  believe  that  this  ser- 
mon was  preached  more  than  sixty  years  ago.  It 
is  a  sermon  for  to-day,  with  a  sense  of  modern 
proyems  and  a  note  of  modern  interpretation."  It 
is  quite  possible  that  some  of  its  wisdom  was  of 
Dr.  Channing's  contribution,  for  just  before  its 
delivery  he  summoned  Dr.  Tuckerman  for  a  good 
talk  about  his  work,  for  the  support  of  which  the 
Benevolent  Fraternity  of  Churches  had  just  been 
organized.  Nowhere  does  Channing's  mind  appear 
more  soundly  practical  than  in  his  formulation  of 
his  thought  concerning  this  organization.  He  was 
strenuous  for  its  subordination  to  the  American 
Unitarian  Association.  He  believed  that  a  new 
life  would  be  breathed  into  the  Association  by  its 
consciousness  of  participation  in  so  great  a  work. 
To  those  objecting  that  the  new  organization  would 
acquire  a  sectarian  character  from  its  connection 
with  the  Unitarian  Association  he  replied :  — 

I  cannot  consent  to  this  view.  I  do  not  beheve  that 
we  can  or  ought  to  act  with  other  Christians  in  this 
cause.  I  earnestly  desire  to  cooperate  with  them  as  far 
as  possible.  For  example,  when  a  particular  vice,  like 
intemperance,  is  to  be  warred  against,  we  ought  to  join 
with  them  heart  and  hand.  But  when  the  object  is  to 
improve,  elevate,  the  depressed  classes  of  the  community 
.  .  .  then  we  must  go  to  them  with  our  distinctive  views  ; 
not  our  theological  dogmas,  but  our  views  of  human 


THE  SOCIAL  REFORMER  327 

nature,  of  God's  character,  of  the  true  perfection  of 
man,  etc.,  views  as  distinctive  as  those  of  the  Trinita- 
rians. In  this  work  we  ought  not  to  be  fettered  by 
compromise  with  other  sects. 

If  in  this  construction  there  was  any  defect 
of  Channing's  habitual  liberality,  we  are  assured 
by  it,  as  we  could  hardly  be  in  any  other  way,  of 
that  native  centre  of  his  thought  to  which  he  held 
fast  as  a  ship  to  her  sheet-anchor  in  the  shouting 
gale.  Fundamental  to  his  social  and  religious  life 
was  his  confidence  in  the  dignity  of  human  nature, 
the  greatness  of  the  soul,  and  the  end  of  all  his 
labor  was  a  corresponding  dignity  of  human  char- 
acter, intellectual,  moral,  and  religious.  Without 
that  starting-point,  he  saw  no  way  to  reach  this 
goal.  Hence,  a  theology  centering  in  a  doctrine 
of  man's  total  depravity  was  a  complete  disqualifi- 
cation for  the  work  of  social  reformation  in  his 
eyes.  If  this  was  treason  to  his  unsectarian  liber- 
ality, those  who  objected  might  make  the  most 
of  it.     So  help  him  God,  he  could  no  otherwise. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    OPEN   MIND 

CHANNmG's  intellectual  virtue  was  the  most 
characteristic  aspect  of  his  life.  Were  it  not  for 
this,  we  might  be  tempted  to  embrace  Dr.  Andrew 
Peabody's  opinion  that  his  preeminence  was  solely 
that  of  his  inclusive  range.  He  was  not  saintlier 
than  Gannett  or  Lowell  or  Ware,  than  Dr.  Green- 
wood or  Ephraim  Peabody ;  he  was  far  less  schol- 
arly than  Norton ;  Buckminster  was  far  more  the 
great  pulpit  orator,  gifted  in  face  and  form  and 
voice  as  Channing  never  was ;  Ichabod  Nichols, 
whose  glory  for  the  present  generation  has  departed 
as  if  it  had  never  been,  was  a  flame  of  glowing  elo- 
quence quite  equal  to  if  not  surpassing  Channing' s ; 
in  sheer  intellectual  force  and  philosophical  acu- 
men. Walker  took  easily  a  higher  rank;  of  good 
pastors  there  were  many  more  efficient,  partly  as 
having  better  health,  and  partly  as  being  strong  in 
social  gifts  and  graces,  where  Channing  was  ex- 
tremely weak,  and  caring  more  for  people  and 
persons  than  he  did  or  could ;  small  the  minority 
of  faithful  antislavery  witnesses,  himself  the  judge,^ 

1  "  No  sect  in  this  country  has  taken  less  interest  in  the  slavery 
question,  or  is  more  inclined  to  conservatism  than  our  body."  (Let- 


THE  OPEN  MIND  329 

among  Unitarian  preachers,  and  the  social  height 
from  which  it  was  projected  gave  to  his  testimony 
a  peculiar  force,  but  Samuel  J.  May  and  a  few 
others  were  not  inferior  to  him  in  their  devotion 
to  the  hated  cause.  Dr.  Peabody  found  the  signifi- 
cance of  Channing  in  his  wide  inclusion  of  the 
various  abilities  and  gifts  which  had  such  vivid 
illustration  in  the  several  Unitarian  ministers  he 
named.  It  was  here  in  part,  no  doubt,  but  more 
distinctly,  I  am  persuaded,  in  an  openness  of  mind 
which  would  have  been  remarkable  in  any  time, 
and  was  preeminently  so  in  a  time  so  heavily 
weighted  with  authority  and  prescription  as  his 
own.  Moreover,  though  there  were  as  good  men 
as  Channing  in  his  generation,  there  was  no  other 
for  whom  simple  goodness  loomed  so  vast  on  the 
horizon  of  his  mind,  as  the  highest  common  attri- 
bute of  man  and  God. 

A  great  many  people  in  Channing' s  time  had 
not  so  much  as  heard  that  there  was  any  ethics  of 
the  intellect.  It  was  his  conception  of  this  sphere 
that  assigned  to  him  his  place  in  the  Unitarian 
Controversy,  that  constituted  his  relation  to  the 
Unitarian  body,  that  made  him  suspicious  of  all 
sects,  that  summoned  him  to  the  defence  of  intel- 
lectual rights,  however  jeoparded  ;  that  set  a  "  froHc 

ter  to  Blanco  White,  Sept.  IS,  1839.)  To  this  he  added,  April  13, 
1840,  "  There  are  in  the  body  individuals  dissatisfied  with  the 
present  condition,  and  anxious  for  higher  manifestations  of  the 
truth  and  spirit  of  Christianity.  The  ministers  deserve  our  great 
praise.  They  seem  to  me,  as  a  body,  remarkable  for  integrity, 
for  the  absence  of  intrigue,  for  superiority  to  all  artifice." 


330  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

welcome  "  in  his  eyes  for  all  new  thought,  however 
unconventional  its  dress  and  speech.  It  dictated 
his  letters  of  1815  ;  it  flowered  into  the  lyrical 
ardor  of  his  "  Spiritual  Freedom ; "  it  inspired 
the  preface  to  his  first  volume  of  collected  sermons 
and  addresses  ;  it  made  him  "  a  party  by  himself  " 
to  those  too  resolutely  bent  on  the  sectarian  organi- 
zation of  the  New  Movement ;  it  elected  him  the 
champion  of  Abner  Kneeland's  right  to  print 
opinions  which  he  (Channing)  honestly  abhorred  ; 
it  inspired  his  hatred  of  proslavery  mobs  ;  it  kept 
his  own  mind  always  fresh  and  growing,  until 
death,  coming  untimely,  found  him 

Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade, 
With  a  free,  onward  impulse. 

There  was  no  more  schism  in  the  line  of  Chan- 
ning's  evolution  here  than  in  his  social  interests ; 
much  less  than  in  his  antislavery  development,  which 
halted  visibly  between  the  Richmond  lesson  and 
that  learned  at  St.  Croix.  He  attained  to  liberal- 
ity of  temper  while  stiU  semi-orthodox  in  thought. 
It  was  far  less  his  intellectual,  or  even  his  moral, 
revulsion  from  Calvinism  than  his  belief  that  new 
restraints  were  being  forged  for  religious  thought 
that  carried  him  into  the  Unitarian  Controversy. 
He  so  represented  it  in  his  famous  preface  of  1830, 
of  which  we  have  already  taken  cognizance  ;  and 
he  had  anticipated  this  preface  in  substance,  and 
even  formally,  in  a  sermon  preached  to  his  people 
on  his  return  from  Newport  in  1827.     With  some 


THE  OPEN  MIND  331 

variation  in  the  expression  of  his  life  purpose,  his 
gravitation  was  habitual  to  the  persuasion  that  in- 
tellectual freedom  was  the  grand  object  of  his  best 
endeavors,  both  for  himself  and  for  his  fellow  men. 
There  was  nothing  here  to  contravene  his  ethical 
passion.  Without  intellectual  freedom  there  could 
be,  he  thought,  no  unretarded  moral  victory. 

The  first  of  the  two  great  continuous  sermons 
on  Self-Denial  anticipated  much  that  was  written 
on  the  same  subject  in  the  Fenelon  article.^  I  am 
the  proud  possessor  of  the  manuscript  of  this  ser- 
mon, which  I  have  always  valued  as  one  of  Chan- 
ning's  greatest  and  best.  Its  strength  is  mainly 
spent  in  a  rejection  of  the  idea  that  we  should 
"  deny  our  reason."  "  Never,"  he  said,  "  never  d<> 
violence  to  your  rational  nature.  He  who  in  any 
case  admits  doctrines  which  contradict  reason,  ha^ 
broken  down  the  great  barrier  between  truth  and 
falsehood,  and  lays  open  his  mind  to  every  delu- 

1  The  sermon  was  written  in  1825,  the  article  in  1829.  On  the 
back  of  the  manuscript  Channing  inscribed  the  names  of  the 
places  where  it  was  preached.  One  of  these  is  Lyons,  N.  Y.,  and 
thereby  hangs  a  pretty  tale.  There  was  never  any  Unitarian 
church  in  Lyons.  How,  then,  did  Channing  come  to  preach  there? 
For  answer  I  did  not  have  to  go  farther  than  my  own  life  of 
Sallie  Holley,  A  Life  for  Liberty.  Myron  Holley,  the  father  of 
Sallie,  was  a  free-thinking  person,  and  he  held  religious  services 
in  his  parlor,  himself  doing  the  preaching.  When  Channing  was 
on  his  way  to  Niagara,  he  persuaded  him  to  stay  in  Lyons  over 
Sunday  and  preach  for  him  in  a  public  hall.  Sallie  Holley,  then 
a  child  of  seven  or  eight  summers,  walked  to  the  place  of  meet- 
ing with  Channing,  he  holding  all  the  way  her  hand  in  his,  a 
never-to-be-forgotten  sacrament.  And  now  I  know  the  very  ser- 
mon that  delighted  Myron  Holley's  soul  that  day. 


332  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

sion.  .  .  .  The  truth  is,  and  it  ought  not  to  be 
disguised,  that  our  ultimate  reliance  is,  and  must 
be,  on  our  own  reason.  Faith  in  this  power  lies  at 
the  foundation  of  all  other  faith.  No  trust  can  be 
placed  in  God  if  we  discredit  the  faculty  by  which 
God  is  discerned.  .  .  .  Reason  is  the  very  faculty 
to  which  revelation  is  addressed."  In  this  connec- 
tion occurs  one  of  the  passages  which  has  been 
double-starred  by  all  those  who  value  Channing's 
brave  anticipation  of  the  coming  things.  A  thun- 
derstorm (I  have  so  read)  can  be  compressed  into 
a  drop  of  dew.  So  in  the  clear  transparency  of 
this  passage  is  gathered  up  the  storm  of  May  19, 
1841,  when  Theodore  Parker's  South  Boston  Ser- 
mon split  the  Unitarian  house  in  twain. 

If,  after  a  deliberate  and  impartial  use  of  our  best 
faculties,  a  professed  revelation  seems  to  us  plainly  to 
disagree  with  itself  or  to  clash  with  great  principles  that 
we  cannot  question,  we  ought  not  to  hesitate  to  withhold 
from  it  our  belief.  /  am  surer  that  my  rational  nature 
is  from  God  than  that  any  hook  is  the  expression  of  his 
will.  This  light  in  my  own  breast  is  his  primary  reve- 
lation, and  all  subsequent  ones  must  accord  with  it,  and 
are  in  fact  intended  to  blend  with  and  brighten  it. 

It  is  very  interesting  to  find  the  sentence  I  have 
italicised  abridged  in  the  manuscript,  thus :  "  I  am 
surer,  etc.,"  as  if  the  rest  were  something  that  he 
knew  by  heart. 

With  this  noble  confidence  in  the  sufficiency  of 
reason  he  was  extremely  jealous  of  all  limitations 
of  the  free  use  of  reason  imposed  by  creeds  and 


THE  OPEN  MIND  333 

sects.  Hostility  to  creeds  was  part  of  his  inher- 
itance from  the  eighteenth-century  liberals.  They 
were  devout  Scripturalists,  and  the  ground  of  their 
objection  to  creeds  was  that  only  Scripture  words 
were  good  enough  to  express  scriptural  thought. 
"  Human  creeds  "  was  the  formula  of  the  liberal 
reproach.  Channing  entered  cordially  into  this 
view,  and  it  never  lost  its  attraction  for  his  mind, 
while  yet,  as  time  went  on,  other  aspects  became 
more  prominent,  especially  the  barrier  offered  by 
creeds  to  new  invasions  of  ideas,  and  the  temptation 
to  insincerity  involved  in  the  conflict  of  the  old 
creeds  with  the  new  light.  The  best  expression  of 
a  distrust  to  which  his  writings  furnish  countless 
illustrations,  is  the  article  "  On  Creeds."  It  is  part 
of  a  long  letter  which  appeared  in  the  "  Chris- 
tian Palladium"  of  February  14,  1837,  and  was 
addressed  to  the  body  of  worshippers  calling  them- 
selves "  Christians."  In  so  far  as  the  letter  is  a 
criticism  of  their  ways,  it  has  too  much  of  that 
ex  cathedra  tone  into  which  Channing  sometimes 
fell.  The  part  on  creeds  is  better  than  the  whole. 
He  complained  that  they  separated  men  from 
Christ ;  that  the  churches  drowned  his  voice  with 
the  clatter  of  their  articles.  The  believer  is  told 
to  listen  to  Christ,  but  also  told  that  "  he  will  be 
damned  if  he  receive  any  lessons  but  such  as  are 
taught  in  the  creed." 

I  cannot  but  look  on  human  creeds  with  feelings 
approaching  contempt.  When  I  bring  them  into  con- 
trast with  the  New  Testament,  into  what  insignificance 


334  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

do  they  sink!  What  are  they?  Skeletons,  freezing 
abstractions,  metaphysical  expressions  of  unintelligible 
dogmas ;  and  these  I  am  to  regard  as  the  expositions  of 
the  fresh,  living,  infinite  truth  which  came  from  Jesus ! 
...  I  learn  less  of  Jesus  by  this  process  than  I  should 
learn  of  the  sun  by  being  told  that  this  glorious  luminary 
is  a  circle  about  a  foot  in  diameter.  .  .  .  Christian  truth 
is  infinite.  Who  can  think  of  shutting  it  up  in  the  few- 
lines  of  an  abstract  creed  ?  You  might  as  well  com- 
press the  boundless  atmosphere,  the  all-pervading  light, 
the  free  winds  of  the  universe  into  separate  parcels,  and 
weigh  and  label  them,  as  break  up  Christianity  into  a 
few  propositions.  Christianity  is  freer,  more  illimitable 
than  the  light  or  the  winds.  ...  It  is  a  spirit  rather 
than  a  rigid  doctrine,  the  spirit  of  boundless  love.  .  .  . 
Who  does  not  see  that  human  creeds,  setting  bounds  to 
thought  and  telling  us  where  all  inquiry  must  stop,  tend 
to  repress  this  holy  zeal  [for  Christian  truth],  to  shut 
our  eyes  on  new  illumination,  to  hem  us  within  beaten 
paths  of  man's  construction,  to  arrest  that  perpetual  pro- 
gress which  is  the  life  and  glory  of  an  immortal  mind? 

Doubtless  the  following  words  were  pertinent 
when  they  were  written  ;  but  where  hundreds  then 
could  feel  their  personal  application,  thousands  can 
do  so  now :  — 

If  new  ideas  spring  up  in  the  mind,  not  altogether 
consonant  with  what  the  creed-monger  has  established, 
he  must  cover  them  with  misty  language.  If  he  hap- 
pen to  doubt  the  language  of  his  church,  he  must  strain 
its  phraseology,  must  force  it  beyond  its  obvious  import, 
that  he  may  give  assent  to  it  without  departures  from 
truth.  All  these  processes  must  have  a  blighting  effect 
upon  the  mind  and  heart.     They  impair  self-respect. 


THE  OPEN  MIND  335 

They  cloud  the  intellectual  eye.  They  accustom  men  to 
tamper  with  the  truth.  In  proportion  as  a  man  dilutes 
his  thought  and  suppresses  his  conviction,  to  save  his 
orthodoxy  from  suspicion,  in  proportion  as  he  borrows 
his  words  from  others,  instead  of  speaking  in  his  own 
tongue ;  in  proportion  as  he  distorts  language  from  its 
common  use,  that  he  may  stand  well  with  his  party ;  in 
that  proportion  he  clouds  and  degrades  his  intellect,  as 
well  as  undermines  the  manliness  and  integrity  of  his 
character.  How  deeply  do  I  commiserate  the  minister, 
who,  in  the  warmth  and  freshness  of  his  youth,  is  visited 
with  glimpses  of  higher  truth  than  is  embodied  in  the 
creed,  but  who  dares  not  be  just  to  himself,  and  is  made 
to  echo  what  is  not  the  simple,  natural  expression  of  his 
own  mind  !  .  .  .  Better  for  a  minister  to  preach  in  barns, 
or  in  the  open  air,  where  he  may  speak  the  truth  with  the 
fulness  of  his  soul,  than  to  lift  up  in  cathedrals,  amidst 
pomp  and  wealth,  a  voice  which  is  not  true  to  his  inward 
thought.  If  they  who  know  the  chains  of  creeds  once 
knew  the  happiness  of  breathing  the  air  of  freedom  and  of 
moving  with  an  unincumbered  spirit,  no  wealth  or  power 
in  the  world's  gift  would  bribe  them  to  part  with  their 
spiritual  liberty. 

The  sect  was  for  Channing  only  the  creed  or- 
ganized and  personalized,  and  while  he  did  as  much 
as  any  to  effect  the  Unitarian  differentiation,  and 
was  one  of  the  first  cheerfully  to  accept  the  Uni- 
tarian name  for  himself  and  those  sharing  his 
beliefs  and  principles,  his  satisfaction  with  the 
Unitarian  fellowship  was  always  in  proportion  to 
its  worthiness  to  bear  the  title  given  to  it  by  Dr. 
Kirkland,  "  the  Unsectarian  Sect."  If  the  form 
of  the  body  was  necessarily  sectarian,  so  much  the 


336  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

more  earnest  must  it  be  to  prove  its  unsectarian 
spirit,  its  free  assent  to  truth  wherever  found,  its 
cordial  recognition  of  Christian  character  in  asso- 
ciation with  whatever  form  of  thought.  "  Think 
no  man  the  better,  no  man  the  worse,  for  the 
church  he  belongs  to."  "  On  sects,  and  on  the 
spirit  of  sects,  I  must  be  allowed  to  look  with  grief, 
shame,  pity  —  I  had  almost  said  contempt."  Of 
all  human  history  he  found  that  of  the  Christian 
sects  to  be  the  most  painful  and  humiliating. 

An  enemy  to  every  religion,  if  asked  to  describe  a 
Christian,  would,  with  some  show  of  reason,  depict  him 
as  an  idolater  of  his  own  distinguishing  opinions,  covered 
with  badges  of  party,  shutting  his  eyes  to  the  virtues 
and  his  ears  to  the  arguments  of  his  opponents,  arrogat- 
ing all  excellence  to  his  own  sect,  all  saving  power  to 
his  own  creed,  sheltering  under  the  name  of  pious  zeal 
the  love  of  domination,  the  conceit  of  infallibility,  and 
the  spirit  of  intolerance,  and  trampling  on  men's  rights 
under  the  pretence  of  saving  their  souls.  .  .  .  We  see 
Christians  denouncing  and  excommunicating  one  an- 
other for  supposed  error,  until  every  denomination  has 
been  pronounced  accursed  by  some  portion  of  the  Chris- 
tian world  ;  so  that  were  the  curses  of  men  to  prevail  not 
one  human  being  would  enter  heaven. 

In  the  spirit  of  these  judgments  he  sustained  a 
relation  to  the  Unitarian  body  that  attracted  to 
him  the  sympathy  of  many  Unitarians,  the  doubts 
of  many  more.  It  might  be  difficult  to  bring  all 
his  utterances  on  this  subject  into  an  appearance 
of  entire  consistency.  They  reflected  different 
stages  of  his  experience,  different  moods  of  his 


THE  OPEN  MIND  337 

mind,  different  aspects  of  the  Unitarian  develop- 
ment. He  found  much  to  praise  in  tliis  and  some 
things  to  condemn.  Especially,  as  he  grew  older 
in  years  and  younger  in  spirit,  he  found  himself 
out  of  sympathy  with  Unitarians  whose  conserva- 
tive temper  made  them  suspicious  of  aU  change. 
But,  again,  some  of  the  more  conservative  were 
less  sectarian  than  some  others,  and  so  grappled 
him  with  hoops  of  steel.  Octavius  Frothingham, 
in  his  "  Boston  Unitarianism,"  finds  the  later  Chan- 
ning  hardly  more  a  representative  Boston  Unitarian 
than  young  Theodore  Parker,  who  hailed  Channing 
as  the  head  of  a  new  Unitarianism,  the  old  having 
no  head.  In  a  great  sermon  of  1828  Channing 
stated  his  position  in  terms  that  would  have  re- 
quired little,  if  any,  modification  at  any  subsequent 
period :  — 

I  indeed  take  cheerfully  the  name  of  a  Unitarian,  be- 
cause unwearied  efforts  are  used  to  raise  against  it  a  pop- 
ular cry ;  and  I  have  not  so  learned  Christ  as  to  shrink 
from  reproaches  cast  on  what  I  deem  his  truth.  Were 
the  name  more  honored  I  should  be  glad  to  throw  it  off ; 
for  I  fear  the  shackles  which  a  party  connection  imposes. 
I  wish  to  regard  myself  as  belonging  not  to  a  sect,  but 
to  the  community  of  free  minds,  of  lovers  of  truth,  of 
followers  of  Christ,  both  on  earth  and  in  heaven.  I  de- 
sire to  escape  the  narrow  walls  of  a  particular  church, 
and  to  live  under  the  open  sky,  in  the  broad  light,  look- 
ing far  and  wide,  seeing  with  my  own  eyes,  hearing  with 
my  own  ears,  and  following  Truth  meekly  but  reso- 
lutely, however  arduous  or  solitary  be  the  path  in  which 
she  leads.  I  am,  then,  no  organ  of  a  sect,  but  speak 
from  myself  alone. 


338  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

In  the  same  spirit  we  find  Mm  writing  Rev. 
J.  H.  Thorn  of  Liverpool,  after  reading  the  vol- 
ume of  "Liverpool  Lectures,"  in  which  Thorn, 
Martineau,  and  Henry  Giles  had  made  a  splendid 
defence  of  Unitarianism  from  a  line  much  more 
advanced  than  that  of  the  earlier  apologists  :  — 

I  was  glad  you  did  not  undertake  to  defend  any  Uni- 
tarianism but  your  own.  I  know  that  in  this  way  the 
benefit  of  authority  is  lost,  and  the  unity  of  the  sect  is 
threatened  ;  but  what  unity  is  of  any  worth,  except  the 
attraction  subsisting  among  those  who  hold,  not  nomi- 
nally, but  really,  not  in  word,  but  with  profound  convic- 
tion and  love,  the  same  great  truths  ?  I  see  in  these 
Lectures  the  signs  of  a  freer  discussion  than  we  have 
yet  had.  ...  It  is  no  easy  thing  to  let  the  [New  Tes- 
tament] records  speak  for  themselves,  to  take  them  as 
we  find  them,  to  let  them  say  what  will  injure  their 
authority  in  the  present  state  of  men's  minds. 

Of  his  later  inclination  to  a  humanitarian  view 
of  Jesus,  which  eventually  brought  him  to  this 
view,  there  are  many  intimations,  more  particu- 
larly in  his  letters.  The  letter  just  quoted  has  an 
important  one  which  cannot  but  remind  us  of  Em- 
erson's regret  of  the  "  noxious  exaggeration  of  the 
person  of  Jesus."     Channing  wrote  :  — 

We  are  more  and  more,  and  very  properly,  inclined 
to  rest  Christianity  on  the  character,  the  spirit,  the  divine 
elevation  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  tendency  of  this  is 
to  beget  a  swollen  way  of  speaking  about  him  and  his 
virtues,  very  inconsistent  with  the  simple  beauty  and 
majesty  of  his  character,  and  which  is  fitted  to  throw  a 
glare  over  him,  and  not  to  present  that  distinct  appre- 


THE   OPEN  MIND  339 

henslon  of  him  so  necessary  to  a  quickening  and  trans- 
forming love.  It  is  an  age  of  swelling  words.  I  must 
plead  guilty  myself,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  the  Lectures 
are  free  from  the  offence. 

A  few  months  later,  September  10,  1841,  he 
wrote  to  James  Martineau,  then  preaching  at  Liv- 
erpool, and  thirty-six  years  old :  — 

Old  Unitarianism  must  undergo  important  modifi- 
cation or  developments.  Thus  I  have  felt  for  years. 
Though  an  advance  on  previous  systems,  and  bearing 
some  better  fruits,  it  does  not  work  deeply,  it  does  not 
strike  living  springs  in  the  soul.  This  is  perfectly  con- 
sistent with  the  profound  piety  of  individuals  of  the 
body.  But  it  cannot  quicken  and  regenerate  the  world, 
no  matter  how  reasonable  it  may  be,  if  it  is  without 
power.  Its  history  is  singular.  It  began  as  a  protest 
against  the  rejection  of  reason,  —  against  mental  slavery. 
It  pledged  itself  to  progress,  as  its  life  and  end ;  but  it 
has  gradually  grown  stationary,  and  now  we  have  a 
Unitarian  orthodoxy.  Perhaps  this  is  not  to  be  won- 
dered at  or  deplored,  for  all  reforming  bodies  seem 
doomed  to  stop,  in  order  to  keep  the  ground,  much  or 
little,  which  they  have  gained.  They  become  conserva- 
tive, and  out  of  them  must  spring  new  reformers,  to  be 
persecuted  generally  by  the  old.  With  these  views,  I 
watch  all  new  movements  with  great  interest. 

To  a  friendly  correspondent  who  had  written 
him  that  Unitarians  might  make  "  many  conces- 
sions "  to  the  Trinitarians,  he  wrote  :  — 

It  is  true  I  might  adopt  much  of  the  Trinitarian  lan- 
guage, not  only  on  the  Trinity,  but  the  Atonement.  I 
could  say  that  Christ  died  to  magnify  the  law,  to  satisfy 


340  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

Divine  justice,  and  that  God  cannot  forgive  without 
manifesting  displeasure  at  sin.  But  I  cannot  think  with 
Talleyrand,  that  "  the  use  of  language  is  to  hide  our 
thoughts."  Such  approximations  to  those  from  whom 
we  really  differ  seem  to  me  to  put  in  peril  our  "  sim- 
plicity and  godly  sincerity."  I  know  not  where  they 
will  stop.  They  also  obstruct  the  spirit  of  truth  to 
which  every  Christian  must  be  willing  to  be  a  martyr. 
Still  more,  the  usurpation  which  demands  such  con- 
cessions is  a  wrong  to  our  common  Lord  and  Master, 
and  to  the  human  mind,  which  must  not  be  debarred 
from  seeking  truth  and  giving  utterance  to  its  deep  con- 
victions. In  saying  this  I  do  not  speak  as  a  Unitarian, 
but  as  an  independent  Christian.  I  have  little  or  no  in- 
terest in  Unitarians  as  a  sect.  I  have  hardly  anything 
to  do  with  them.     I  can  endure  no  sectarian  bonds. 

This  letter  should  make  it  siLfficiently  plain  that 
his  great,  and  perhaps  growing,  fear  that  the  Uni- 
tarian body  would  be  captured  by  the  sectarian 
spirit,  involved  no  least  distrust  of  Unitarian  opin- 
ions as  differing  from  those  of  the  traditional 
theology.  But  some  of  its  exj)ressions  have  been 
exploited  for  much  more  than  they  are  worth,  with 
a  view  to  exhibit  Channing  as  reacting  from  Uni- 
tarian to  orthodox  opinions.  Another  letter  has 
more  frequently  been  put  to  the  same  use.  It  was 
written  to  a  Welsh  or  Irish  Methodist,  in  1841, 
and  said  :  — 

I  distrust  sectarian  influence  more  and  more.  I  am 
more  detached  from  a  denomination  and  strive  to  feel 
more  my  connection  with  the  universal  Church,  —  with 
all  good  and  holy  men.    I  am  little  of  a  Unitarian,  have 


THE  OPEN  MIND  341 

little  sympathy  with  the  system  of  Priestley  and  Bel- 
sham,^  and  stand  aloof  from  all  but  those  who  strive 
and  pray  for  clearer  light,  who  look  for  a  purer  and  more 
effectual  manifestation  of  Christian  truth. 

This  letter  is  explained  in  part,  and  mainly,  by 
Channing's  unsectarian  spirit,  but  in  part  also  by 
the  fact  that  he  was  writing  to  a  correspondent  to 
whom  Unitarianism  meant  exclusively  the  system 
of  Priestley  and  Belsham,  with  which,  because  of 
its  necessarian  and  materialistic  elements,  Chan- 
ning  had  "  less  sympathy  than  with  many  of  the 
'  orthodox.' "  In  other  letters  to  correspondents 
in  Great  Britain,  he  will  be  found  adapting  him- 
self to  the  foreign  use  of  terms.  So  far  was  he 
from  reacting  towards  orthodoxy  that  it  was,  as 
we  have  seen,  "  Unitarian  orthodoxy "  that  ex- 
cited his  disapprobation.  It  was  because  the  Uni- 
tarians were  not  far  enough  from  their  traditional 
moorings,  not  because  they  Vv^ere  too  far,  that  he 
visited  on  them  his  displeasure  and  distrust. 

James  Martineau  contributed  a  similar  problem 
to  the  gayety  of  nations.  He  was  avowedly  a 
Unitarian  in  his  personal  belief,  but  he  did  not 
believe  in  any  doctrinal  basis  of  religious  organiza- 
tion, and,  consequently,  would  not  connect  himself 
with  any  organization,  local  or  general,  calling 
itself  Unitarian.  Channing's  construction  was 
much  less  severe.     He  was  as  frankly  and  clearly 

^  The  second  clause  of  this  sentence,  "  have  .  .  .  Belsham," 
is  clearly  meant  for  a  restatement  of  the  first,  "  I  .  .  .  Unita- 
rian." 


342  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Unitarian  in  his  personal  opinions  as  it  was  pos- 
sible for  him  to  be,  and  his  divergence  from  the 
traditional  orthodoxy  increased  as  he  went  on. 
Moreover,  he  was  from  its  beginning  a  member 
of  the  Unitarian  Association,  would  have  been  its 
first  president  but  for  his  miserable  health,  and 
was  a  member  of  its  official  board.  But  he  feared 
the  tendency,  real  or  imaginary,  of  the  new  denom- 
ination to  become  a  sect  in  the  opprobrious  sense 
which  was  so  hatefid  to  his  mind,  and  in  propor- 
tion as  he  discovered,  or  thought  he  discovered, 
signs  of  this  tendency,  his  interest  in  organized 
Unitarianism  waned,  waxing  again  at  the  first 
sis:n  of  devotion  to  his  ideal  ends. 

It  is,  however,  necessary  to  remark  that  the  less 
favorable  criticisms  in  the  above  letters  were  all 
included  in  the  closing  period  of  his  life,  —  its  last 
two  or  three  years.  In  the  early  thirties  he  cher- 
ished a  more  hopeful  view.  Sending  his  book  of 
1830  to  the  Baron  de  Gerando,  he  said :  "  I  ought 
to  observe,  however,  that  what  is  here  called  Uni- 
tarianism, a  very  inadequate  name,  is  character- 
ized by  nothing  more  than  by  the  spirit  of  freedom 
and  individuality.  It  has  no  established  creed  or 
symbol.  Its  friends  think  each  for  himself,  and 
differ  much  from  each  other ;  so  that  my  book, 
after  all,  will  give  you  my  mind  rather  than  the 
dogmas  of  a  sect."  Similarly,  in  a  letter  of  1834, 
to  Dr.  Lant  Carpenter,  writing  of  his  "  two  excel- 
lent friends,"  Phillips  and  Tucker  man,  he  says  : 
"Perhaps  these  gentlemen  have  enabled  you  to 


THE  OPEN  MIND  343 

understand  American  Unitarianism  better  than 
you  did  before.  They  are  fair  specimens  of  our 
body  in  one  respect.  I  think  you  must  have  been 
struck  with  the  entire  absence  of  a  sectarian  spirit 
in  their  habits  of  feeling  and  thinking,  and  it 
seems  to  me  that,  with  our  many  and  great  defi- 
ciencies, we  may  be  said  to  be  characterized  by  this 
feature.  We  look  at  Christianity  very  much  as  if 
no  sect  existed,  and  do  not  exaggerate  the  impor- 
tance of  certain  doctrines  because  they  distinguish 
us  from  others."  It  was  a  growing  sense  of  disap- 
pointment as  to  these  particulars,  and,  with  this, 
the  growth  of  what  Channing  called  a  "  Unitarian 
orthodoxy,"  that  tinged  his  later  criticisms  of  the 
Unitarians  with  reprehension  and  regret.  When 
these  criticisms  were  written  he  had  heard  the 
Unitarian  denunciation  of  Furness's  "  Notes  on  the 
Gospels  "  and  "  Biography  of  Jesus,"  the  outcry 
against  Emerson's  Divinity  School  Address  and 
Parker's  South  Boston  Sermon.  He  had,  more- 
over, found  little  sympathy  with  his  antislavery 
ideas  and  purposes  among  his  ministerial  brethren, 
and  the  indi:fference  and  opposition  of  his  own 
people  had  cut  him  to  the  heart.  Then,  too,  it 
should  always  be  remembered  that  he  brought  to 
the  searching  of  the  Unitarian  spirit  an  individu- 
alism as  aloof  as  Emerson's  from  aU  organized 
activity.  If  the  Abolitionists  had  not  been  so 
effectually  organized,  the  harshness  of  their  arraign- 
ment would  not  have  kept  him  from  their  fellow- 
ship. 


344  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

I  find  no  first-hand  expression  ^  of  Clianning's 
sentiments  with  regard  to  Emerson's  withdrawal 
from  his  Boston  pulpit  in  1832  because  of  his 
conscientious  inability  to  administer  the  Lord's 
Supper,  but  ten  years  later  he  met  a  similar  situa- 
tion with  a  simplicity  that  left  nothing  to  desire. 
Frederic  Augustus  Eustis,  a  recent  graduate  of 
the  Harvard  Divinity  School,  would  have  com- 
memorated the  death  of  Jesus  without  the  custom- 
ary bread  and  wine;  whereupon  his  church  was 
denied  the  assistance  it  would  otherwise  have  re- 
ceived and  he  was  refused  ordination  .2  "  Have  we 
here,"  asked  Channing,  "  no  proof  that  the  Unita- 
rian body  is  forsaking  '  its  first  love  '  ?  .  .  .  Must 
our  brethren  be  taught  that  on  this  point  they 
must  think  and  practice  as  we  do  or  forfeit  our 
sympathy?  Is  this  a  ground  on  which  to  run 
up  a  wall  of  partition  ?  Is  this  to  be  made  a  de- 
nominational fence  by  the  friends  of  free  inquiry? 
.  .  .  We  prove  ourselves  '  carnal,'  outward,  earthly, 
unspiritual,  and  sectarian,  when,  for  such  cause, 
we  deny  sympathy  and  aid  to  single-hearted, 
earnest  brethren,  who  are  laboring  to  'hold  fast 
the  light '  under  great  discouragements  amidst  the 
darkness  of  antiquated,  intolerant  systems  of  theo- 

1  But  Miss  Peabody  remembers  "  his  having-  expressed  great 
personal  respect  for  Mr.  Emerson's  severe  sincerity  and  moral 
independence  in  relinquishing-  the  pulpit  of  the  North  Church." 

2  He  never  was  ordained,  but  he  fully  justified  Channing-'s  con- 
fidence when  he  went,  among-  the  first,  to  the  Sea  Islands  on  the 
Carolina  coast,  to  teach  and  guide  the  contrabands  in  their 
"  bewildering  freedom."   He  married  Channing's  daughter,  Mary. 


THE  OPEN  MIND  345 

logy."  After  this,  May  11,  1842,  we  have  not 
anotlier  utterance  from  Clianning  in  the  interests 
of  religious  liberty  of  equal  significance.  He  could 
not  have  ended  on  a  clearer  note,  nor  on  one  more 
disconcerting  to  those  who  would  like  to  believe 
that  he  returned  again  to  the  place  from  which  he 
set  out. 

One  episode  of  Channing's  later  life  put  to  the 
proof  the  reality  of  his  convictions  concerning 
the  practical  limits  of  religious  liberty.  It  is  to 
the  case  of  Abner  Kneeland  that  I  refer.  This 
gentleman,  who  had  been  an  orthodox,  and  then  a 
Universalist,  preacher,  was  now  the  editor  of  "  The 
Investigator,"  a  sheet  which  renewed  from  week 
to  week  the  critical  manners  of  Thomas  Paine, 
but  had  parted  company  with  his  belief  in  God. 
In  January,  1834,  he  was  indicted  for  blasphemy 
under  three  heads,  —  he  had  quoted  a  scurrilous 
passage  from  Voltaire  touching  the  virgin-birth  of 
Jesus ;  he  had  published  an  article  affirming  the 
absurdity  of  prayer ;  he  had  said  in  a  public  let- 
ter in  his  paper,  "  Universalists  believe  in  a  God, 
which  I  do  not,  but  believe  that  their  god,  with  aU 
his  moral  attributes  (aside  from  nature  itseK),  is 
nothing  more  than  a  chimera  of  their  own  imagi- 
nation." The  case  dragged  its  slow  length  along 
for  several  years.  The  prosecuting  attorney  was 
the  same  James  T.  Austin  who  won  imperishable 
renown  at  the  Love  joy  meeting.  In  1838  Knee- 
land  was  finally  sentenced  to  two  months'  imprison- 
ment for  having,  in  the  language  of  the  judge,  ad- 


346  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

dressed  to  the  jury,  "  wilfully  denied  the  existence 
of  God."  Ellis  Gray  Loring,  foremost  in  all  good 
works,  and  among  Channing's  instigators  to  his 
braver  things,  prepared  a  petition  to  the  governor 
asking  that  Kneeland's  sentence  be  remitted.  The 
petition  (revised  by  Dr.  Channing)  was  an  admi- 
rable statement  of  the  reasons  why  the  publication 
of  atheistical  opinions  should  not  be  punished  as  a 
crime.  It  was  signed  by  one  hundi'ed  and  sixty- 
seven  persons,  and  Dr.  Channing's  name  led  all 
the  rest.  It  provoked  bitter  attack  and  a  counter- 
petition  which  made  the  governor's  path  of  duty 
plain,  and  Kneeland's  sentence  was  served  out. 
Channing,  of  course,  was  held  responsible,  not  only 
for  Kneeland's  atheism,  but  for  the  scurrility  he 
had  quoted  from  Voltaire.  But  none  of  these 
things  moved  him  from  his  confidence  in  the  essen- 
tial justice  and  wisdom  of  his  course.  It  can  easily 
be  imagined  what  a  grief  it  was  to  some  of  Chan- 
ning's people  to  have  him,  not  only  mixed  up  in 
such  a  business,  but  choosing  for  himself  the  lead- 
ing part.  On  the  other  hand,  he  must  have  had 
the  satisfaction  of  seeing  many  of  their  names  in 
the  list  following  his  own. 

Attorney-General  Austin's  scent  for  heresy  was 
so  keen  that  in  1834  this  devout  Unitarian  set  his 
heart  on  the  public  prosecution  of  Kev.  George  R. 
Noyes  for  denying  the  New  Testament  fulfilment 
of  Old  Testament  prophecies.  This  he  had  done 
in  an  "  Examiner  "  article  reviewing  Hengsten- 
berg's  opinions.    Either  the  indictment  was  quashed 


THE  OPEN   MIND  347 

or  the  due  process  of  law  suffered  some  other 
equally  efficient  check.  This  incident,  which  must 
have  interested  Channing  profoundly,  left  no  trace 
upon  his  letters  that  is  now  discernible.  Mr. 
Noyes  was  then  a  young  minister  at  Petersham, 
Mass.  ;  it  was  not  until  1840  that  he  became  a 
professor  in  the  Harvard  Divinity  School.  His 
appointment  was  a  sign  that  the  argument  from 
prophecy  for  the  supernatural  character  of  Chris- 
tianity had  broken  down.  For  the  early  Christians, 
it  was  the  main  argument ;  in  the  eighteenth-cen- 
tury conflict  of  the  Christian  apologists  with  the 
Deists,  it  was  of  equal  if  not  greater  prominence 
than  the  argument  from  miracles.  It  has  now  few 
to  do  it  reverence.  If  any  one  has  lingering  doubts 
he  should  read  Kuenen's  convincing  "  Prophets  and 
Prophecy  in  Israel."  Beginning  with  the  views 
generally  acceptable  to  both  the  orthodox  and  the 
liberal  parties,  Channing  finally  arrived  at  Dr. 
Noyes's  view^  of  no  literal  fulfilments,  together 
with  the  view  of  the  new  orthodoxy  that  the  spirit 
of  the  Old  Testament  prophets  was  prophetic,  and 
dynamically  so,  of  the  New  Testament  religion. 

Channing's  relations  with  John  Pierpont  in  Pier- 
pont's  painful  conflict  with  the  distillers  and  rum- 

1  By  which  he  was  probably  much  impressed,  for  the  Examiner 
article  was  a  weighty  and  careful  piece  of  work.  He  begged  Mr. 
Noyes  to  come  and  see  him.  He  went,  expecting  to  hear  much 
wisdom.  But  Dr.  Channing's  part  of  the  conversation  was  a  long 
series  of  searching  questions,  in  the  Socratic  manner.  I  had  this 
from  Dr.  Noyes  in  my  Divinity  School  days.  I  can  hear  the  sharp 
crack  of  his  laugh,  as  I  recall  the  place  and  talk. 


348  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

sellers  of  his  congregation  were  of  a  piece  with  his 
open  sympathy  with  all  ministers  of  religion  who, 
iiot  content  with  exalting  the  beauties  of  "personal 
('religion,"  were  resolved  to  bring  their  Christian 
[principles  to  bear  on  public  interests  and  social 
crimes.^  He  wrote  to  Pierpont  in  his  most  perilous 
hour,  "  Sir,  should  this  struggle  in  your  society 
result  in  some  ten  or  a  dozen  of  your  most  active 
opponents  withdrawing  from  your  church,  and  in 
others  who  sympathize  with  you  and  sustain  your 
course,  taking  their  places,  Hollis  Street  pulpit 
will  stand  the  highest  in  the  city."  This  apostrophe 
was  not  a  little  weakened  by  the  second  clause. 
To  drive  out  the  traffickers,  to  purify  the  temple, 
was  sufficient  honor.  In  this  incident  Channing 
saw,  beyond  the  ob\dous,  concrete  effect,  its  illus- 
tration of  far-reaching  tendencies.  "  It  was  very 
clear  to  him,"  says  his  nephew,  "  that  the  danger 
was  pressing  of  a  complete  subserviency  of  politics, 
the  press,  public  opinion,  and  the  pulpit,  to  the 
insidious  tyranny  of  wealth."  If  the  green  tree 
impressed  him  so,  what  would  he  now  think  of  the 
dry  ?  One  of  our  new  writers  does  not  much  ex- 
aggerate, if  any,  when  he  says  that  the  seat  of 
government  is  only  nominally  at  Washington ;  that 
our  real  governors  are  those  controlling  our  great 
corporate  interests.     Channing's    forecast  was  in 

1  It  is  related  o£  Dr.  James  Walker  that  his  confinement  of  his 
calling  to  the  sphere  of  "  personal  religion  "  was  so  close  that  he 
did  not  permit  himself  to  vote,  fearing  that  such  political  action 
would  infect  the  simplicity  of  his  office  with  a  grievous  taint. 


THE   OPEN  MIND  349 

no  particular  more  just  tlian  when  it  troubled  liim 
with  visions  of  these  things.  He  was  a  Cassandra 
to  his  generation :  his  prophecy  was  not  believed. 
It  would  not  be,  if  uttered  now.  But  that  they 
were  not  believed  was  not  the  only  peculiarity  of 
Cassandra's  prophecies;  another  was  that  they  were 
justified  by  the  event. 

In  no  respect  did  Channing  make  better  proof 
of  open-mindedness  than  in  his  relations  with  the 
younger  men  who  from  1830  to  1840  were  striking 
out  upon  new  paths,  and  his  relations  to  the  new 
movements,  social  and  religious,  which  at  that 
time  were  springing  into  manifold  and  hopeful 
life.  Like  Franklin,  he  would  fain  have  lived  to 
enjoy  the  fuUer  vision  of  the  coming  times.  His 
"enthusiasm  of  hope  "  was  to  him  "  the  evidence  of 
things  not  seen,"  but  not  the  "  substance  "  that  he 
craved.  "  You  young  thinkers,"  he  said,  "  have 
the  advantage  over  us  in  coming  to  the  words  of 
Scripture  without  superstitious  preoccupation,  and 
are  more  likely  to  get  the  obvious  meaning.  We 
shall  walk  in  shadows  to  our  graves."  But  he 
did  his  best  to  dissipate  the  shadows,  not  only  here, 
but  in  all  his  mental  processes.  "  It  is  a  good 
plan,"  he  wrote,  "  ever  and  anon  to  make  a  clean 
sweep  of  that  to  which  we  have  arrived  by  logical 
thought,  and  take  a  new  view  ;  for  the  mind  needs 
the  baptism  of  wonder  and  hope  to  keep  it  vigorous 
and  healthy  for  intuition."  Again  he  wrote,  "  I 
owe  the  little  that  I  am  to  the  conscientiousness 
with  which  I  have  listened  to  objections  springing 


350  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

up  in  my  own  mind  to  what  I  have  inclined  and 
sometimes  thirsted  to  believe,  and  I  have  attained 
through  this  to  a  serenity  of  faith  that  once  seemed 
denied  in  the  present  state."  It  was  in  the  spirit 
of  these  various  expressions  that  he  met  the  bearers 
of  new  light,  making  no  base  surrender  of  his  long 
cherished  opinions,  but  bringing  them  patiently  to 
the  test  of  such  as  seemed  fairly  to  challenge  them. 
Orestes  A.  Brownson  was  a  thinker  whose  in- 
tellectual proportions  have,  perhaps,  been  obscured 
for  us  by  his  perpetual  motion  from  one  point  of 
belief  to  another.  His  religious  consciousness  was 
a  dissolving  view,  and  those  who  have  read  the 
three  big  octavos  that  repeat  the  story  of  his 
changeful  life  need  not  be  told  that  its  essential 
restlessness  did  not  cease  when,  in  1845,  he  joined 
the  Roman  church.  He  was  bound  to  be  a  free- 
thinker, whether  as  Unitarian  or  Roman  Catholic ; 
and  when  the  Roman  Curia  took  offence,  he  kissed 
the  rod,  and  sinned  no  more  —  till  the  next  time. 
He  described  himself  as  having,  at  one  time  or  an- 
other, accepted  and  vindicated  nearly  every  error 
into  which  the  human  mind  had  ever  fallen.  From 
his  early  Presbyterianism  he  passed  to  Universal- 
ism,  and  then  quite  beyond  the  Christian  pale,  en- 
gaging with  Robert  Owen  and  Fanny  Wright  in 
their  schemes  of  social  regeneration.  About  1832, 
Channing's  "  Likeness  to  God "  appealed  to  him 
so  powerfully  that  following  up  its  lead,  he  became 
a  Unitarian,  and  the  minister  of  a  Unitarian 
church.     As  an  enthusiastic  convert,  but  more  as 


THE  OPEN   MIND  351 

an  apt  student  and  interpreter  of  Jonffroy  and 
Cousin,  and  especially  because  of  his  desire  to 
bring  home  his  new  gospel  to  the  poorer  people 
of  Boston,  Channing  was  deeply  interested  in  him 
and  in  his  "  Society  for  Christian  Union  and  Pro- 
gress," to  which  he  preached  from  1836  to  1843. 
But  his  polemical  temper  was  not  at  all  to  Chan- 
ning's  mind,  and  some  of  his  rasher  utterances 
gave  Channing' s  waning  confidence  a  serious 
check. 

Dr.  Furness  had  a  strong  personal  attraction 
for  Channing,  who  welcomed  his  "  Notes  on  the 
Gospels  "  as  containing  "  the  best  biblical  criticism 
he  had  ever  seen,"  but  did  not  find  his  naturalistic 
explanation  of  the  miracles  satisfactory,  or  even 
well  supported.  On  the  other  hand,  the  concession 
to  the  sensible  miracle  in  Martineau's  "  Rationale 
of  Religious  Inquiry  "  seemed  to  him  "  a  jump 
backwards"  from  his  (Martineau's)  claim  for  in- 
tuitive inspiration.  Without  ever  abandoning  the 
New  Testament  miracles,  Channing  completely  re- 
versed the  traditional  view,  holding  them  as  sub- 
stantiated by  the  truth  of  Christianity,  and  not  as 
substantiating  it.  "  Sartor  Resartus  "  took  him 
completely  by  storm,  "  not  as  giving  him  new  ideas, 
but  as  a  quickener  of  all  his  ideas,"  its  perfectly 
original  way  of  expressing  spiritual  truth.  When 
the  "  Dial  "  began  to  count  the  hours  of  the  new 
day,  Channing  was  at  first  very  hopeful,  but  after- 
ward, like  Parker,  disappointed.  He  had  great  con- 
fidence in  Henry  Hedge's  character  and  culture,  and 


352  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

wished  lie  might  see  more  of  him.  For  another 
enterprise  with  which  George  Ripley  was  identi- 
fied, —  its  inspiring  soul,  —  Channing's  hopes  were 
not  extravagant,  yet  very  high.  I  mean  Brook 
Farm.  He  distrusted  absolutely  the  competitive 
system  of  trade,  and  doubted  a  man's  ability  to 
engage  in  it  without  loss  of  personal  integrity.  But 
what  attracted  him  most  to  Brook  Farm  was  the 
promise  it  held  out  of  a  blend  of  intellectual  and 
manual  labor.  For  all  his  hesitations  with  the 
Abolitionists,  he  found,  in  1841,  "  but  one  de- 
cided step  towards  a  higher  practical  manifestation 
of  Christianity,  and  that  is  Aholit'ionJ^  Then 
he  remembered  the  Adin  BaUou  community,  and 
added,  "  I  look  to  that  with  a  good  deal  of  hope." 
But  that  Brook  Farm  was  then  hardly  begun,  he 
would  have  added  that  also.  "  I  never  hoped,"  he 
said,  "  so  strongly  and  so  patiently."  The  Char- 
don  Street  Convention,  that  astonishing  aggrega- 
tion of  reformers  and  fanatics  which  Emerson 
described  with  equal  sympathy  and  humor  in  the 
"  Dial,"  found  Channing  there  to  listen,  if  he  could 
not  approve  the  general  drift,  and  quite  unscared. 
Some  resented  a  moderator  as  an  infringement  of 
their  perfect  liberty,  but  a  wiser  sentiment  pre- 
vailed. He  coidd  hope  more  from  the  soil  that 
yielded  such  vagaries  than  from  Beacon  Street 
respectability.  "  Nothing,"  he  said,  "  terrifies  me 
in  these  wildest  movements.  What  has  for  years 
terrified  and  discouraged  me  is  apathy.''^ 

Between   him  and  Emerson   there  was   always 


THE  OPEN  MIND  363 

mutual  appreciation.  "  In  our  wantonness/'  said 
Emerson,  "  we  often  flout  Dr.  Channing,  and  say- 
he  is  getting  old ;  but  as  soon  as  he  is  ill,  we  re- 
member he  is  our  bishop,  and  that  we  have  not 
done  with  him  yet."  Channing's  deafness  kept 
him  from  Emerson's  early  Boston  lectures,  but 
Channing's  daughter  heard  them  with  great  joy, 
and  Emerson  graciously  lent  her  his  manuscripts 
to  read  to  her  father,  whose  own  idealism  and  in- 
dividualism responded  heartily  to  their  main  intent. 
For  his  opinion  of  Emerson's  Divinity  School 
Address,  of  July  15,  1838,  which  we  now  rank 
with  Channing's  Baltimore  and  Parker's  South 
Boston  Sermon  as  the  second  part  of  the  great 
trilogy  of  liberal  religion,  we  are  indebted  solely 
to  Miss  Peabody's  recollections  and  notes  made  at 
the  time.  The  main  impression  is  of  the  extraor- 
dinary meekness  and  patience  with  which  he  sub- 
mitted to  her  long  drawn  series  of  questions.  Those 
who  have  fancied  in  him  an  attitude  of  intellectual 
superiority  should  read  this  "  diligent  inquisition," 
and  also  how  he  once  read  a  sermon  to  Mr.  Nor- 
ton for  his  critical  opinion,  which,  to  Dr.  Follen, 
who  was  present,  seemed  like  "sacrilegious  ice" 
on  Channing's  fervent  heat.  What  emerges  from 
Miss  Peabody's  report  is  that  Channing  found  him- 
self in  essential  agreement  with  the  Address,  but 
deprecated  its  indifference  to  the  miracles  and 
other  facts  of  the  New  Testament  narration.  He 
thought  Henry  Ware  fighting  a  shadow  when  con- 
tending against  Emerson's  denial  of  the  personality 


354  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

of  God.  Channing  found  personality  in  the  Ad- 
dress. He  thought,  considering  on  what  basis  the 
Divinity  School  was  founded,  that  Mr.  Emerson 
would  have  been  more  courteous  if  he  had  given 
the  Address  elsewhere.  Miss  Peabody  told  him 
of  her  begging  Emerson  to  print  "  Friend "  in 
"  friend  of  soiils,"  describing  Jesus,  and  how  Em- 
erson said,  "  No,  if  I  do  that,  they  will  all  go  to 
sleep  ; "  to  which  Channing  smiled  and  said,  "  To 
purify  men's  love  of  Jesus,  it  may  be  in  some  in- 
stances desirable  not  to  think  of  his  individuality. 
Perhaps  Jesus  meant  to  express  this  when  he  said 
to  his  personal  disciples, '  It  is  expedient  that  I  go 
away  from  you.  Unless  I  go  away,  the  Comforter, 
which  is  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  cannot  come.'  "  ^ 

When  in  1841  James  Freeman  Clarke  returned 
from  Kentucky,  where  he  had  made  his  "  Western 
Messenger"  the  organ  of  Channing's  antislavery 
opinions  and  started  Emerson's  "  Humble-Bee " 
on  its  long  upward  flight,  he  went  about  to  form 
a  society  in  Boston  on  original  lines.  Its  support 
was  to  be  voluntary,  its  worship  congregational,  — 
the  people  sharing   in  the  hymns  and  prayers,  — 

1  One  often  feels  that  Miss  Peabody  mixes  herseK  tinduly  with 
■what  she  professes  to  report,  and  I  have  followed  her  only  to 
the  extent  of  her  evident  congruity  with  Channing-  as  directly 
known.  I  have  been  surprised  to  find  how  large  was  W.  H. 
Channing's  unacknowledged  debt  to  her  journal  in  the  Memoir. 
Miss  Peabody  published  her  Reminiscences  in  18S0,  thirty-two 
years  after  the  Memoir.  If  but  an  indifferent  Boswell,  we  can- 
not be  too  grateful  for  the  words  and  traits  she  has  preserved. 
Moreover,  the  impregnable  rock  of  Channing's  letters  crops 
through  in  many  places. 


THE  OPEN  MIND  355 

the  metliod  social ;  that  is,  there  were  to  be  fre- 
quent meetings  for  conversation  on  subjects  of  vital 
interest.  The  programme  sounds  innocent  enough, 
but  to  the  average  Boston  temper  of  the  time  it 
was  a  daring  innovation.  To  Dr.  Channing  it 
opened  a  prospect  that  delighted  him.  He  wel- 
comed Mr.  Clarke  to  frequent  consultations  as  to 
the  best  ways  and  means.  He  encouraged  his  Fed- 
eral Street  parishioners  and  members  of  his  family, 
his  brothers  and  his  son,  to  become  members  of  the 
new  society.  When  the  question  was  a  declara- 
tion of  faith,  it  was  Channing  who  took  the  larger 
and  more  spiritual  view.  Mr.  Clarke's  formula 
was  "Our  faith  is  in  Jesus,  as  the  Christ,  the  Son 
of  God ;  "  Channing  preferred  "  in  Jesus  as  the 
divinely  appointed  teacher  of  truth."  "  He  said," 
wrote  Mr.  Clarke,  "  that  the  danger  would  be  a 
tendency  to  conform  to  the  old  established  ways, 
as  the  mass  exerted  a  great  power  of  attraction. 
He  said  again,  emphatically,  that  we  must  be  more 
afraid  of  formality  than  of  eccentricity." 

One  of  the  attractions  of  the  West  Eoxbury 
parish  for  Theodore  Parker  in  1837  was  that  Dr. 
Channing  would  be  near  for  counsel  and  encourage- 
ment, and  the  event  fully  justified  his  hope.  He 
made  daring  inroads  upon  Channing' s  isolation, 
but  was  always  cordially  received.  They  discussed 
"  conscience,"  and  Channing's  was  the  more  mod- 
ern, scientific  view.  They  talked  over  Strauss's 
"  Life  of  Jesus,"  which  Parker  reviewed  for  the 
"  Examiner  "  with  more  smartness  than  apprecia- 


356  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

tion,  and  Channing  "  observed  very  archly  that  he 
should  not  he' very  sorry  if  some  of  Kneeland's  fol- 
lowers would  do  it  into  English,"  a  sentiment  that 
should  afford  a  moment  of  refreshment  to  those 
whom  Channing's  moral  elevation  tires.  Parker 
was  convinced  that  a  young  man  with  Channing's 
hberal  opinions  and  reformatory  spirit  "  could  not 
find  a  place  for  the  sole  of  his  foot  in  Boston, 
though  half  a  dozen  pulpits  were  vacant."  But 
Parker's  South  Boston  Sermon  did  quite  as  much 
to  set  the  edge  of  Channing's  Christian  supernat- 
uralism  as  to  prove  his  sympathy  with  courageous 
thought.     He  wrote, — 

The  great  idea  of  the  discourse  —  the  immutableness 
of  Christian  truth  —  I  respond  to  entirely,  and  I  was 
moved  by  Parker's  heartfelt  utterance  of  it.  Still  there 
was  a  good  deal  in  the  sermon  I  did  not  respond  to. 
I  grieved  that  he  did  not  give  some  clear,  distinct  expres- 
sion of  his  belief  in  the  Christian  miracles.  ...  I  see 
not  how  the  rejection  of  these  can  be  separated  from  the 
rejection  of  Jesus  Christ.  Without  them  he  becomes  a 
mere  fable ;  for  nothing  is  plainer  than  that  from  the 
beginning  miracles  constituted  his  history.  .  .  .  With- 
out miracles  the  historical  Christ  is  gone.  ...  In  regard 
to  miracles  I  never  had  the  least  difficulty.  The  grand 
miracle  is  the  perfect,  divine  character  of  Jesus.  .  .  . 
He  was  the  sinless  and  spotless  Son  of  God,  distin- 
guished from  all  men  by  that  infinite  peculiarity,  free- 
dom from  moral  evil. 

In  his  next  following  letter  Channing  made  the 
necessary  criticism  on  this  view  of  the  miraculous 
sinlessness  of  Jesus :  "  Though  he  came  to  be  an 


THE  OPEN  MIND  357 

example,  yet  in  the  points  in  wMch  we  so  much 
need  an  example,  —  in  our  conflict  with  inward 
evil,  in  our  approach  to  God  as  sinners,  in  peni- 
tence and  self -purification,  —  he  wholly  fails  us.^^ 
He  certainly  does  if  his  perfection  was  miraculous. 
But  Channing  goes  on  to  say  that  "  the  formation  of 
his  character,  though  wholly  unknown  to  us,  was 
wholly  free."  Here  is  a  tangled  web  of  various 
inconsistencies.  If  we  know  nothing  of  the  forma- 
tion of  Jesus'  character,  how  can  we  know  that  it 
was  wholly  free?  And,  if  it  was  wholly  free,  how 
does  the  example  fail  ?  And  why  should  the  unique 
result  be  regarded  as  miraculous,  if  the  process 
was  wholly  natural?  Channing  was  wiser  in  his 
spontaneous  utterance  than  in  his  more  deliberate 
speech.  What  a  man  cannot  help  saying  is  the 
right  measure  of  his  thought.  And  Channing 
could  not  help  saying  that  Christ's  character  was 
imitable  both  in  its  process  and  result.  Hence  his 
great  sermon  on  the  imitableness  of  Christ's  char- 
acter, his  great  doctrine  that  all  minds  are  of  one 
family,  and  a  hundred  similar  things.  In  the  very 
letter  I  have  quoted,  he  glides  into  his  deeper  mood 
by  irresistible  attraction :  "  To  my  mind  he  [Jesus] 
was  intended  to  be  an  anticipation  of  the  perfec- 
tion to  which  we  are  guided,  to  reveal  to  us  what 
is  in  germ  in  all  souls."  "  As  to  Mr.  Parker,"  he 
said,  "  I  wish  him  to  preach  what  he  thoroughly 
believes  and  feels.  I  trust  the  account  you  re- 
ceived of  attempts  to  put  him  down  was  in  the 
main  a  fiction.    Let  the  full  heart  pour  itself  forth ! 


358  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

...  I  honor  his  virtues,  and  I  earnestly  desire  for 
him  that  illumination  which  will  make  him  an  un- 
mixed blessing  to  his  fellow  creatures."  It  was  a 
great  misfortune  for  Parker  and  the  Unitarians 
that  Channing  did  not  live  to  see  his  (Parker's) 
controversy  with  them  come  full  circle.  Surely  his 
benign  influence  on  those  engaged  in  that  contro- 
versy would  have  been  an  inestimable  boon. 

To  those  well  acquainted  with  the  course  of 
Channing's  life  and  mind,  many  illustrations  of  his 
open-mindedness  will  occur  which  I  have  not  set 
down.  To  take  some  and  leave  others  was  made 
compulsory  for  me  by  the  limitations  of  my  space. 
For  they  are  not  here  or  there,  but  everywhere  in 
his  sermons,  letters,  talk.  The  style,  in  this  sort, 
was  the  man.  I  do  not  know  of  any  one  to  whom 
we  can  go  with  better  certainty  of  encountering  a 
mind  so  open  to  all  truth,  so  cordial  with  all  hon- 
est thought  and  generous  action,  that  it  is  a  per- 
petual invitation  to  the  communion  of  that  church 
which  is  transcendant  of  all  sectarian  divisions,  — • 
the  most  petty,  and  those  of  deeper  grain  which 
break  up  the  unity  of  religion  into  the  great  reli- 
gions of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE   PERSONAL    ASPECT 

As  Channing's  life  drew  past  its  mid-career,  and 
stretched  forward  to  the  untimely  close,  the  look 
of  Allston's  picture  gradually  faded  from  his  face 
and  made  way  for  those  stronger  features  and 
those  deeper  lines  which  are  preserved  for  us  in 
the  admirable  portrait  by  Gambardella,  painted 
in  1839.  The  deepening  hollows  in  the  cheeks 
made  the  cheekbones  more  prominent  and  threw 
the  good  straight  nose  into  more  sharp  rehef ,  while 
the  increasing  pallor  of  his  countenance  gave  the 
large  sunken  eyes  even  a  more  wonderful  expres- 
siveness than  that  of  their  earlier  light.  The  sick 
look  hovered  most  about  the  mouth,  qualifying  its 
natural  firmness  with  tremulous  and  pathetic  lines. 
Matter  of  fact  people  called  this  face  emaciated 
and  cadaverous ;  the  more  poetic  fancied  an  at- 
tenuation of  the  bodily  substance  that  revealed  a 
spiritual  presence  with  the  least  possible  obstruc- 
tion. 

Those  who  had  known  Channing  only  by  hear- 
say or  his  books,  when  they  first  met  him  or  saw 
him,  were  surprised,  if  not  disappointed,  to  find 
the  physical  man  so  incommensurate  with  his  spir- 


360  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

itual  mate.  "  What !  "  cried  a  big  foreign  admirer, 
meeting  him  on  the  threshold  of  a  friend's  house 
at  Portsmouth,  and  holding  out  his  arms  as  if  ex- 
pecting Channing  to  run  into  them,  "  What !  The 
gr-r-reat  Dr.  Channing !  "  A  better  known  story 
is  that  of  the  Kentuckian  who,  when  told  how 
slightly  he  was  built,  could  not  believe  the  report. 
"  Dr.  Channing  small  and  weak  !  "  he  cried  ;  "  I 
thought  him  six  feet  at  least,  with  fresh  cheeks, 
broad  chest,  a  voice  like  that  of  many  waters,  and 
strong-limbed  as  a  giant."  There  was  less  and 
less  sign  of  the  sick  man  in  the  printed  and  the 
spoken  word  as  time  went  on  and  the  sickness 
actually  increased.  And  somehow  the  informing 
soul  habitually  triumphed  over  its  frail  tenement, 
and  gave  assurance  of  abundant  strength.  "  He 
was  a  man  of  delicate  frame,"  said  Dr.  Dewey, 
"but  of  a  great  presence." 

The  catalogue  of  his  infirmities  is  a  long  and 
weary  one,  and,  if  he  had  been  as  watchful  of  his 
sensations  as  some  of  our  later  hterary  invalids, 
his  memoirs  would  have  been  mainly  pathological. 
Dyspepsia,  lassitude,  insomnia,  nervous  excitement, 
and  depression  were  the  peculiar  notes  that  were 
repeated  endlessly  in  various  combinations.  A 
good  night's  sleep  was  something  calling  for  spe- 
cial thankfulness.  The  sermon  that  was  a  delight 
in  the  preaching  set  his  pulse  flying  and  put  brain 
and  stomach  out  of  gear.  Greater  exertions  had 
to  be  paid  for  in  the  coin  of  many  sleepless  nights. 
In  1826  he  writes,  "  I  know  not  when  I  have  been 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  361 

so  well  as  now,  but  I  am  not  sanguine.  Life  and 
health  are  most  uncertain.  But  I  am  not  the 
less  grateful  for  a  bright  and  vigorous  day  because 
it  gives  no  pledge  of  many  such  to  come.  The 
very  feeling  of  the  uncertainty  of  life  increases  its 
value.  I  certainly  do  enjoy  it  highly."  ...  In 
1827,  "I  have  borne  so  long  the  burden  of  that 
half -health,  which  makes  a  man  unable  to  say 
whether  he  is  sick  or  well,  and  which  restrains  all 
the  soarings  and  continued  efforts  of  the  mind, 
that  I  earnestly  desire  some  release  from  it."  Once 
he  writes  (1831),  "I  have  experienced  during  this 
depression  of  the  body,  what  I  have  sometimes 
known  before,  —  a  singular  brightness  and  clear- 
ness of  mind  on  the  most  interesting  subjects.  .  .  . 
May  it  not  be  that,  in  this  depression  of  the  ani- 
mal life,  the  mind  is  more  free  from  the  influence 
of  matter,  is  more  itself,  and  gives  us  some  earnest 
of  what  it  is  to  be?  "  But  he  did  not  often  lay  this 
flattering  unction  to  his  soul.  He  had  got  well  past 
the  "  spite  of  this  flesh "  asceticism  of  his  youth, 
and  looked  to  his  best  health  for  his  happiest  in- 
spirations. As  early  as  1830  he  ceased  to  hope 
for  any  permanent  improvement.  "  In  another 
world  I  trust  that  I  shall  renovate  my  youth ;  but 
for  the  present  I  must  try  to  keep  a  sound  mind  in 
a  weak  body."  His  steady  purpose  was  to  husband 
his  resources.  To  some  he  seemed  to  be  always 
carrying  himself  on  a  pillow,  and  perhaps  less 
babying  would  have  been  better,  but  he  certainly 
did  not  "  enjoy  bad  health,"  and  his  self-tending 


362  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

was  the  best  trap  he  could  devise  to  catch  a  few 
more  working  hours.  Dr.  Dewey  says  that  from 
motives  of  prudence  he  sometimes  changed  one 
coat  for  another  five  or  six  times  a  day.  A  robust 
satirist  said  that  he  had  a  different  wrap  for  every 
point  of  the  compass,  and  I  can  testify  that  they 
were  many,  judging  from  that  variety  which  I  have 
seen,  almost  too  sacred  for  my  touch.  But  then 
it  should  be  remembered  that  his  walks  often  took 
him  past  that  corner  where  Thomas  G.  Appleton 
advised  that  a  shorn  lamb  be  tied,  so  that  passers-by 
might  get  the  benefit  of  the  attempered  wind. 
"  Why  do  you  not  go  out,  sir,  and  take  a  walk?  " 
said  a  parishioner  who  found  him  miserable  and 
depressed.  Channing  pointed  a  tragic  finger  to 
the  vane  of  Park  Street  Church  and  said,  "Do  you 
see  that  ?  "  "  Yes,"  answered  the  parishioner,  '^  I 
see  it,  and  it  has  been  stuck  fast  and  j^ointing  north- 
east for  a  fortnight."  Then  Channing  sallied  out 
and  found  the  warm  south  wind  turning  the  Com- 
mon green. 

The  Newport  summers  lengthened  out  until  each 
took  nearly  half  the  year,  and  even  when  in  Boston 
Dr.  Channing' s  appearance  in  his  own  pulpit  was 
infrequent  for  some  years  before  his  death.  Dr. 
Gannett  not  only  bore  the  main  burden  of  the 
preaching  ^  until  his  own  strength,  miserably  over- 

^  Dr.  Gannett's  manuscript  record  of  his  preaching-  from  1824 
to  1842,  the  period  of  his  joint  ministry  with  Channing,  puts  me 
in  complete  possession  of  the  facts.  The  little  brown  book  is  a 
pathetic  testimony  to  his  minute  carefulness.  In  1824,  Dr. 
Channing  preached  eleven  times ;  in  1825,  sixteen ;  1826,  twenty- 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  363 

taxed,  was  broken,  and  after  it  had  rallied,  but  all 
the  parochial  work,  for  which  he  was  much  better 
fitted  than  Dr.  Channing,  too  cloud-wrapt  in  his 
great  soaring  thoughts  to  respond  quickly  to  the 
personal  appeal  and  reach  a  human  hand.  It  is 
hard  to  conceive  that  Channing  was  ever  a  good 
pastor,  and  he  did  not  improve  in  proportion  to  his 
increasing  engrossment  in  the  large,  social  aspect 
of  religion.  "  I  am  strong,"  he  said,  "  before  the 
multitude,  but  weak  before  the  individual."  He 
had  no  skill  to  meet  his  visitors  haKway  or  to 
come  down  to  the  level  of  their  interests.  Espe- 
cially do  those  in  sorrow  require  a  lively  sympa- 
thy rather  than  a  lofty  generalization.  Channing, 
standing  in  the  midst  of  a  heart-broken  family, 
and  saying,  "  What  a  mysterious  Providence  !  "  is 
not  an  edifying  spectacle.^  It  is  a  mistake,  how- 
ever, to  imagine  that  Channing' s  nature  was  not 

six  (this  year  and  the  next  two  were  his  most  active  years) ;  1827, 
twenty-six ;  1828,  twenty-seven ;  1829,  twenty -two ;  1830,  eigh- 
teen ;  1831,  fourteen  (he  was  in  the  West  Indies  from  November, 
1830,  to  June,  1831);  1832,  six;  1833,  nine;  1834,  six;  1835, 
nine ;  1836,  five  (the  record  breaks  off  March  20,  and  is  not 
resumed  till  December,  1838.  In  the  mean  time,  Dr.  Gannett 
was  in  Europe,  trying  to  recover  his  lost  health.  How  much  Dr. 
Channing  preached  in  his  absence  I  have  no  means  of  finding  out, 
but  there  was  certainly  no  regidar  dependence  on  him) ;  1839, 
five  times ;  1840,  four ;  1841,  not  once  !  1842,  twice,  the  last  time 
on  his  sixty-second  birthday,  April  7.  It  should  be  remembered 
that  there  were  two  services  each  Sunday.  Channing  seldom 
preached  in  the  afternoon,  when  Dr.  Gannett,  after  preaching  in 
the  morning,  generally  exchanged.  It  should  also  be  remem- 
bered that  Dr.  Channing  did  more  preaching  than  this  record 
signifies,  —  considerable  away  from  home. 

2  Henry  T.  Tuckerman,  Characteristics  of  Literature,  p.  71. 


364  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

emotional.  It  was  profoundly  emotional,  and  what 
seemed  lack  of  emotion  was  habitual  self-control. 
He  was  stoical  in  his  self-suppression.  When  told 
of  Follen's  dreadful  death,  he  buried  an  agonized 
face  in  his  hands  for  a  few  moments,  and  when  he 
spoke  again  it  was  with  a  steady  voice.  When  an 
ominous  crack  ran  through  the  Old  South  Church 
and  a  great  panic  ensued,  he  stood  gazing  quietly 
about  him,  as  if  without  anxiety.  He  was,  per- 
haps, too  exigent  in  his  demands  on  others  for 
a  self-control  as  quiet  as  his  own.  When  Doro- 
thea Dix  accompanied  him  and  Mrs.  Channing  to 
St.  Croix,  suffering  from  an  intolerable  languor, 
she  became,  she  writes,  "  the  unfortunate  subject 
of  Dr.  Channing's  jests."  " '  My  dear,'  he  says 
to  Mrs.  Channing,  '  where  can  Miss  Dix  be  ?  But 
I  need  not  ask ;  doubtless  very  busy  as  usual. 
Pray  what  is  that  I  see  on  yonder  sofa,  some  object 
shrouded  in  white?  Oh,  that  is  Miss  Dix  after 
aU.  Well,  well,  tell  it  not  in  Gath !  How  are 
the  mighty  fallen  ! '  "  The  saints  often  have  this 
exacting  temper.  In  Channing  it  implied  some 
lack  of  personal  imagination  ;  perhaps  the  penalty 
of  the  chronic  invalid's  preoccupation  with  his  own 
feelings.  He  was  stem  with  petty  exhibitions  of 
half  voluntary  nervousness.  When  almost  every 
one  in  the  church  was  coughing,  he  said  :  "  This 
coughing  is  sympathetic.  I  will  pause  till  it  has 
ceased."  The  ensuing  stillness  was  not  so  mirac- 
ulous as  it  appeared.  Dr.  Furness  says  that  Chan- 
ning's people   hardly   dared   to  breathe  when  he 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  365 

was  preaching,  and  that  sometimes,  at  the  end 
of  a  great  passage,  you  could  hear  the  long-held 
breath  escaping  in  a  general  sigh.  If  his  anti- 
slavery  action  meant  some  personal  alienation,  his 
great  and  growing  fame  assured  him  an  overflow- 
ing congregation  whenever  it  was  known  that  he 
would  preach. 

I  have  taxed  the  kindness  of  my  friends  in 
making  out  the  order  of  Channing's  domestic 
transmigrations.  They  have  been  for  me  through 
the  dusty  volumes  of  the  Boston  Directory,  and 
not  much  is  left  in  doubt.  From  the  Berry  Street 
parsonage  he  removed  after  his  marriage  to  the 
house  of  his  wife's  mother  on  Mt.  Yernon  Street ; 
next,  to  a  house  on  Beacon  Street,  where  now 
stands  the  Athenaeum,  having  there  his  own  home  ; 
and  there  his  children  were  born.  He  probably 
remained  there  until  he  went  to  Europe  in  1822. 
After  his  return,  he  went  again  to  the  large  Gibbs 
house  on  Mt.  Vernon  Street,  and  continued  to 
live  there  until  his  own  house  was  built  next  door, 
on  the  Gibbs  house  land,  in  1835.  There  were 
no  changes  after  that.  Miss  Peabody  writes  of  a 
period  of  residence  in  Hamilton  Place,  dictated  by 
a  desire  for  a  less  comfortable  and  pleasant  life 
than  that  with  Mrs.  Gibbs,  and  the  house  prov- 
ing very  smoky,  his  purpose  was  the  better  served. 
But  of  this  experiment  the  Boston  Directory  gives 
no  sign,  nor  any  book  or  memory  which  I  have 
explored.  Our  most  lively  picture  of  the  family 
circle  is  furnished  by  an  autobiographical  fragment 


366  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

from  the  pen  of  William  Henry  Channing.  But 
it  does  not  carry  us  beyond  "  the  Federal  Street 
[Berry  Street]  parsonage,  where  all  was  so  simple, 
quiet,  and  plain." 

My  grandmother  [Channing's  mother]  was  mirthful 
and  witty,  loved  her  grandchildren  dearly,  and  rejoiced 
to  welcome  them  ;  and  nothing  could  have  been  kinder 
than  all  my  aunts  and  uncles.  They  were  jovial,^  free- 
spoken,  fond  of  humor,  keen  at  retort  in  the  family 
circle,  and  much  laughter  intermingled  with  their  ear- 
nest discussions.  Still,  the  mere  sense  that  this  was 
the  parsonage,  the  recollection  that  the  beloved  saintly 
brother  was  engaged  in  his  study  above,  or  gone  out  upon 
his  pastoral  round,  and  might  at  any  moment  appear, 
either  from  his  books  or  his  visits,  gave  a  certain  sedate 
gravity  to  the  manners  of  the  family  circle.  And  under 
the  commanding  charm  of  his  presence,  and  without 
any  wish  on  his  part  to  curb  hilarity,  tones  became  sub- 
dued and  movements  more  tranquil,  and  mild  pleasantry 
took  the  place  of  harmless  mirth.  He  was  far  removed, 
however,  from  austerity,  sadness,  or  depression,  and  he 
greatly  enjoyed  the  good  laugh  and  sharpshooting  of 
raillery  and  badinage,  indulging  in  occasional  sallies 
himself. 

Few  of  these  have  been  preserved,  his  judicious 
refusal  to  be  involved  in  Dr.  Parkman's  criticism 
of  Dr.  Tuckerman's  sermon  having  an  almost  soli- 
tary conspicuity.  His  patience  under  severe  trials 
of  this  virtue,  while  certainly  remarkable,  was  not 
quite  absolute.  I  have  long  cherished  a  story, 
which  I  have  never  seen  in  print,  but  which  bears 

1  The  context  shows  that  Dr.  Channing  was  not  included  in 
this  characterization. 


THE   PERSONAL  ASPECT  367 

upon  this  point.  Dr.  Tuckerman,  on  one  of  his  fre- 
quent visits,  enquired  for  Mrs.  Channing,  and  was 
informed  that  she  had  gone  to  Newport  to  open  the 
house  for  the  summer.  "  Alone  ?  "  asked  Dr.  Tuck- 
erman. Dr.  Channing  assented,  and  Dr.  Tucker- 
man, responding,  said,  "  Do  I  understand  you  to  say 
that  Mrs.  Channing  has  gone  into  the  country  alone 
to  open  the  house  for  the  summer?"  "That  is 
what  1  said.  Dr.  Tuckerman."  "  Well,  Dr.  Chan- 
ning," said  his  friend,  "  you  will  permit  me  to  say 
that  /  should  not  think  of  asking  Mrs.  Tuckerman 
to  go  into  the  country  alone  to  open  the  house  for 
the  summer."  Then  Dr.  Channing  laughed  his 
small,  dry  laugh  and  said,  "  Very  likely.  Dr.  Tuck- 
erman; and,  if  you  should,  most  probably  she 
would  not  go.^^  Whereupon  questions  of  large 
public  interest  were  taken  up.  He  was  certainly 
ungracious  when  he  said,  after  a  vain  attempt  to 
make  himself  clear  at  one  of  the  women's  meet- 
ings, "  I  wish  women  had  more  mind."  We  need 
not  imagine  what  "  lightnings  of  his  holy  wrath  " 
would  have  shrivelled  any  one  who  had  presumed 
to  tell  him  "  a  good  story  "  of  the  evil  kind,  for  we 
cannot  imagine  any  one  so  foolish  as  to  do  that. 
But  he  had  a  modest  repertory  of  stories  which 
had  tickled  his  own  fancy,  and  which  he  could 
tell  with  good  effect.  A  favorite  one  was  that 
of  the  milder  brother  who  sat  under  his  own  pul- 
pit while  Tennent,  the  great  revivalist,  dealt  dam- 
nation from  it  with  unsparing  hand,  until  mercy 
prevailing  over  justice,  the  good  man  slowly  rose 


368  WILLIAM   ELLERY   CHANNING 

and  said  :  "  Brother  Tennent !  Brother  Tennent ! 
Is  there  no  balm  in  Gilead,  is  there  no  physician 
there?"  1 

The  main  impression  that  one  gets  of  the  Chan- 
ning  household  in  its  successive  stages  is  that  of  im- 
limited  talk.  The  accounts  of  Chann inch's  conver- 
sational  attitude  differ  so  much  that  we  are  obliged 
to  believe  that  it  had  much  variety.  Some  found 
him  the  monologist,  and  others  the  Socratic  ques- 
tioner. Some  could  not  get  on  with  him  at  all,  and 
others  found  themselves  in  heavenly  places,  hearing 
cherubic  things.  Thirsty  for  fresh  knowledge,  let 
him  suspect  a  well  of  it,  and  the  part  of  wisdom 
seemed  to  be  to  pump  and  pump.  Whether  the 
visitor  was  swift  to  hear,  or  to  speak,  made  a  great 
difference.  So  it  happened  that  Dr.  Noyes  was 
grieved  because  he  heard  so  little,  and  Dr.  Hedge  be- 
cause he  heard  so  much.  Said  Dr.  Hedge  :  "  There 
was  no  gossip  at  Dr.  Channing's  ;  the  conversation, 
if  you  could  call  it  conversation,  was  always  on 
some  high  theme.  But,  in  truth,  it  was  not  conver- 
sation :  it  was  simply  a  monologue  by  Dr.  Channing 
himself.  This,  or  something  about  it,  led  you  to 
feel  very  much  dissatisfied  with  yourself  when  you 
came  away.  He  did  not  pay  the  slightest  atten- 
tion to  anything  you  said.  If  you  asked  a  question, 
he  probably  did  not  answer  it ;  he  went  on  talking 
on  the  thing  which   interested  him."     It  should 

^  See  Channing  as  a  Man  in  Elizabeth  P.  Channing's  Kindling 
Thoughts.  She  speaks  from  her  own  recollections  of  her  father's 
"  brother  William." 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  369 

be  noticed  that  this  is  Dr.  Hale's  report  of  Dr. 
Hedge,  and  something  of  the  genial  latitude  of  the 
former's  style  has,  perhaps,  qualified  the  latter's 
more  exact  discrimination.  Our  best  reports  of 
Dr.  Channing's  talk  are  Miss  Peabody's,  and  they 
represent  him  as  "  receiving  with  meekness  the 
engi-afted  word,"  a  good  listener,  eager  to  get  at  his 
interlocutor's  point  of  view,  and  to  meet  her  objec- 
tions, which  were  many,  fairly  and  squarely. 

Dr.  Dewey's  personal  recollections  of  his  friend^' 
are  an  invaluable  resource.  He  occupied  Dr. 
Channing's  pulpit  while  he  was  abroad,  and 
preached  for  him  often  before  the  European  jour- 
ney, —  not  only  for  him,  but  to  him.  This  was 
no  easy  matter.  "  With  him  in  the  pulpit,"  one 
preacher  said,  "  my  text  might  be  '  Forgetting  the 
things  that  are  behind,'  but  I  could  n't  forget 
Jiim.''^  His  first  criticism  on  Dewey's  preaching 
was,  "  You  address  yourself  too  much  to  the  imagi- 
nation and  too  little  to  the  conscience."  Dewey 
found  the  singular  weight  of  Channing's  judgment 
in  its  intrinsic  worth  and  in  the  slow  carefulness 
with  which  it  was  put  forward.  "  It  came  in  as 
a  kind  of  reserved  force  that  decides  everything." 
Of  his  conversation  Dr.  Dewey  says  :  — 

It  was,  indeed,  altogether  a  most  remarkable  thing ; 
and  yet  I  do  not  know  that  I  would  purchase  it  at  the 
price  he  paid  for  it.  He  stood  alone  —  I  found  him 
embosomed  in  reverence  and  affection  and  yet  living  in 
a  singular  isolation.  No  being  was  ever  more  simple, 
unpretending,  and  kindly-natured  than  he,  and  yet  no 


370  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

such  being  was  surely  so  inaccessible  —  not  that  he  was 
proud,  but  that  he  was  venerated  as  something  out  of 
the  earthly  sphere.  Scarcely  any  of  his  professional 
brethren,  even  those  for  whom  he  had  the  highest  esteem, 
had  any  familiarity  or  any  proper  freedom  with  him. 
Even  Henry  Ware,  possessing  in  so  many  respects  a 
kindred  nature,  said,  "  I  go  to  Channing ;  I  listen  to 
him  ;  I  go  away  ;  that  is  all."  One  felt  it  necessary  to 
sit  bolt  upright  in  conversing  with  him,  and  to  strain 
his  mind  as  to  a  task.  ...  In  a  quiet  and  low  tone, 
with  little  variety  of  intonation,  without  passion,  without 
a  jest,  without  laughter,  without  one  commonplace  re- 
mark, he  went  on  day  after  day,  either  pursuing  some 
one  theme,  as  he  often  did  for  days,  or,  if  descending  to 
lower  topics,  always  surveying  them  from  the  loftiest 
point  of  view,  and  always  talking  with  such  mental  in- 
sight and  such  profound  emotion  as  penetrated  the  heart 
through  and  through.  There  was  a  kind  of  suppressed 
feeling  about  him,  far  more  touching  than  any  other 
manifestation  could  be.  ...  It  was  long  before  I  could 
lounge  upon  the  sofa,  as  I  talked  with  him,  and  say 
what  I  pleased.  .  .  .  Nobody,  I  think,  ever  threw  an 
arm  around  his  shoulders.  Nobody,  I  imagine,  ever 
said,  on  entering  his  study,  "  How  d'  ye  do,  Channing  ?  " 

Dr.  Dewey  was  curious  to  see  if  his  biography 
would  exhibit  him  as  ever  writing,  *'  My  dear 
Jonathan  "  or  "  My  dear  Phillips  "  to  his  nearest 
friend.  He  was  confident  that  it  would  not,  and 
his  confidence  was  justified  by  the  event.  Pro- 
fessor Woodberry  reminds  us  that  while  the  apostle 
"handled  the  Word  made  flesh,"  no  one  ever 
handled  Dr.  Channing.  Yet  he  was  averse  to  all 
stiffness  and  formality,  disliked   his  "  semilunar 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  371 

fardels,"  and  would  have  been  plain  "  Mr.  Chan- 
ning."  He  heartily  disliked  the  isolating  tendency 
of  his  character  and  mourned  pathetically,  "  I  am 
too  ser lousy  His  was  a  painful  apathy  to  little 
things,  and  to  many  things  which  were  not  little  to 
others,  though  they  might  seem  so  to  him.  What 
seemed  inattention  was  often  abstraction,  or  the 
stream  running  underground.  Sometimes  the 
questioner  would  have  his  question  answered  after 
he  had  himself  forgotten  it.  At  one  time  Dr. 
Dewey  found  him  in  a  small  tenant's  house  in 
Newport,  close  by  the  sea,  "  passing  his  days,"  he 
said,  "  in  questionings  and  doubts."  Asked  if  his 
doubts  concerned  religion,  he  said,  "  No,  my  doubts 
are  about  myself."  It  was  during  this  same  visit 
that  Dr.  Dewey,  after  a  two  days'  stretch  on  one 
deep  theme,  said  to  Dr.  Channing,  "  I  cannot  bear 
this  any  longer ;  if  you  persist  in  talking  in  this 
way,  I  must  take  my  leave  of  you  and  go  home." 
"  Well,"  said  Dr.  Channing,  "  let  it  all  drop ;  let 
us  talk  about  something  else."  But  in  a  little 
while  he  was  back  again  on  the  long  trail  of  his 
persistent  thought. 

We  get  glimpses  of  a  less  exacting  seriousness 
in  the  Boston  evenings  devoted  to  such  "light 
literature  "  as  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  and  Schiller 
and  Richter  and  Wordsworth  and  Shelley,  Miss 
Peabody  doing  the  prose  reading,  Channing  him- 
self the  poets,  with  many  a  pregnant  comment. 
His  judgment  of  Goethe  was  by  no  means  so  harsh 
as  we  should  anticipate.     Indeed,  for  all  the  exi- 


372  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

gency  of  his  moral  standards,  his  Christianity  was 
too  closely  identified  with  that  of  Jesus  for  him 
to  be  otherwise  than  considerate  of  men's  faults. 
When  the  strain  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister "  proved 
too  great,  he  would  say,  "  Let  us  have  something 
a  little  more  enlivening,"  and  Miss  Mitford's 
sketches  were  brought  on.  He  found  Bidwer's 
novels  distressing  and  delighted  in  the  humanity  of 
Dickens,  and,  bating  his  sentimental  feudahsm,  in 
Scott's  crowded  and  adventurous  page. 

Channing's  domestic  happiness  was  perfect,  and 
overflowed  in  many  expressions  of  gratitude  and 
satisfaction  in  his  correspondence  with  his  friends. 
The  bright,  sympathetic  wife,  "  a  great  beauty  "  in 
her  younger  days,  abounding  always  in  a  noble 
dignity  and  charm,  suffered  much  from  rheuma- 
tism, affecting  particularly  her  hands  and  eyes, 
and  her  most  scrupulous  care  was  to  keep  him  as 
much  in  the  dark  as  possible  as  to  her  disability 
and  pain,  while  guarding  his  own  health  and  com- 
fort with  like  assiduity,  doing  her  good  to  him  by 
stealth.  Had  he  known  how  much  he  was  being 
cared  for,  he  would  straightway  have  rebelled.  He 
wrote,  in  1834  :  — 

Our  cup  runneth  over.  Life  Is  truly  a  blessing  to  us. 
Could  I  but  see  others  as  happy,  what  a  world  this 
would  be !  But  it  is  a  good  world,  notwithstanding  the 
darkness  hanging  over  it.  The  longer  I  Hve,  the  more 
I  see  the  sun  breaking  through  the  clouds.  I  am  sure 
the  sun  is  above  them. 

The  "  exuberant,  irrepressible  animation  "  of  his 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  373 

children  was  to  him  a  source  of  mingled  wonder 
and  delight.  *'  The  holiday  life  of  my  children 
strikes  me  as  a  mystery.  .  .  .  Perhaps  I  do  not 
enjoy  it  less  for  comprehending  it  so  little.  I  see 
a  simple  joy  which  I  can  trace  to  no  earthly  source, 
and  which  appears  to  come  fresh  from  heaven.  It 
seems  to  me,  I  could  never  have  been  so  happy  as 
my  children  are.  I  feel  as  if  so  bright  an  infancy, 
though  not  distinctly  recollected,  would  still  offer 
to  memory  a  track  of  light ;  as  if  some  vernal  airs 
from  that  early  paradise  would  give  vague  ideas 
of  a  different  existence  from  the  present."  He 
talks  of  "  romping  "  with  them,  but  it  must  have 
been  with  a  restrained  hilarity,  even  when  "  play- 
ing horse "  and  being  driven  by  his  coat-tails 
round  the  room.  It  was  his  wife  who  was  sur- 
prised in  the  act  of  playing  horse  upon  all  fours 
when  a  small  grandchild  had  been  left  to  her  pecu- 
liar care.  To  no  subject  did  he  give  more  attention 
than  to  his  children's  education.  Miss  Peabody 
was  one  of  their  teachers  and  Miss  Dix  another, 
and  they  enjoyed  his  constant  interest  in  their 
work.  We  find  him  sitting  at  his  children's  feet, 
trying  to  learn  the  secret  of  their  light-hearted 
freedom  from  all  care,  and  so  become  more  child- 
like in  the  Heavenly  Father's  house. 

Natural  influences  were  always  congenial  to 
Channing's  spirit,  and  to  see  him  at  his  best  upon 
the.  personal  and  social  side,  we  should  see  him  in 
his  Oakland  ^  "  garden,"  as  the  whole  farm  was 

1  After  the  death  of  Miss  Sarah  Gibbs  it  was  sold  to  Mr. 


374  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

called,  so  dominant  was  its  garden  cultivation. 
CHanning  was  never  so  poetic  in  his  sensibility  and 
his  expression  as  in  that  pleasant  haunt.  His 
annual  migrations  thither  began  with  his  married 
life,  and  his  absence  from  the  city  was  much 
lengthened  out  after  the  division  of  his  work  with 
Mr.  Gannett.  Only  the  French  Revolution  of  1830 
drew  him  back  to  the  city  in  early  September,  that 
he  might  pour  out  his  soul  in  sympathy  with  the 
revolutionists.  The  household  was  made  up  more 
numerously  and  variously  than  promised  well  for 
Channing's  peace  of  mind.  Miss  Gibbs  owned  the 
farm  and  ran  it ;  her  mother  was  the  presiding 
genius  of  its  hospitality,  and  the  house  was  always 
kept  well  filled  with  guests.  A  family  of  six,  with 
their  own  purse  and  table,  did  the  domestic  work, 
ruling  inviolate  an  independent  realm.  But  this 
populous  aggregation  did  not  trouble  Channing  in 
the  least.  He  particularly  enjoyed  the  expansive 
hospitahty  of  the  house ;  the  children  it  included 
most  of  all.  Miss  Gibbs  was  such  a  devout  Episco- 
palian that  she  would  never  go  to  hear  Channing 
when  he  preached  in  the  vicinity,  but  their  mutual 
respect  and  affection  easily  stood  the  strain  of  her 
rigidity.  Moreover,  she  had  confidence  in  his 
moral  judgment,  and  when  her  haymakers,  for  whom 
she  had  provided  good  coffee,  struck  for  rum,  she 

Perry  Belmont ;  by  him  to  Mr.  Cornelius  Vanderbilt.  Mr.  Alfred 
VanderbUt,  the  present  owner,  is  contemplating  alterations  so 
elaborate  that  the  orig'inal  house  will  be  quite  hopelessly  ob- 
scured. 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  375 

went  to  lier  brother-in-law  and  said,  "  What  should 
you  do,  William,  if  the  hay  were  yours  ?  "  "I 
think  I  should  hold  out,  Sarah,"  he  replied,  and  she 
did  so  at  some  loss,  through  damage  to  her  crop. 

Channing  among  his  trees  and  flowers  was  capa- 
ble of  a  sensuous  joy  of  which  he  had  no  call  to  be 
ashamed.  He  said,  "  I  sometimes  think  that  I 
have  a  peculiar  enjoyment  of  a  fine  atmosphere. 
It  is  to  me  a  spiritual  pleasure  rather  than  physi- 
cal, and  seems  to  be  not  unworthy  of  our  future 
existence."  Again,  he  wrote,  "  What  a  blessing 
such  a  day  as  this !  So  much  a  creature  of  the 
senses  am  I  still,  that  I  can  find  on  such  a  morn- 
ing that  it  is  easier  to  hope  in  God,  and  to  antici- 
pate a  boundless  good  for  my  race."  "How  can  I 
convey  to  you  the  music  of  the  trees  this  moment 
in  my  ear,  made  by  a  fresh  south  wind  after  a 
shower  last  night?  And  yet  this  is  one  of  my 
events."  "  I  almost  wonder  at  myself,  when  I 
think  of  the  pleasure  the  dawn  gives  me  after 
having  witnessed  it  so  many  years.  This  blessed 
light  of  heaven,  how  dear  it  is  to  me !  and  this 
earth  which  I  have  trodden  so  long,  with  what  af- 
fection I  look  on  it !  I  have  but  a  moment  ago 
cast  my  eyes  on  the  lawn  in  front  of  my  house,  and 
the  sight  of  it,  gemmed  with  dew  and  heightened 
by  the  shadows  of  the  trees  which  faU  upon  it, 
awakened  emotions  more  vivid,  perhaps,  than  those 
I  felt  in  youth."  He  questioned  the  wisdom  of  the 
ancients  in  speaking  of  their  Mother  Earth.  "  She 
is  so  fresh,  youthful,  living,  and  rejoicing  !  "     But 


376  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

then  so  fruitful,  too,  and  so  exuberant.  So  keen 
was  Channing's  sensibility  to  natural  beauty  that 
sometimes  it  was  more  than  he  could  bear  ;  even  the 
sight  of  a  beautiful  flower,  as  I  have  already  quoted, 
giving  him  bodily  pain.  Again,  the  natural  beauty 
bred  in  him  a  kind  of  ecstasy  which  dissolved  the 
substance  of  the  world  into  a  clear  transparency ; 
"  Do  you  understand  me,  when  I  say  that  this  solid 
earth  and  all  that  it  contains  seem  to  me  more  and 
more  evanescent  at  the  very  moment  that  they  re- 
veal to  me  the  Everlasting?  "  But  for  the  most 
part  the  beauty  aU  around  him  at  Oakland  quieted 
his  fluttering  pulse  and  gave  him  calm  and  poise. 
From  his  long  retreats,  he  went  back  to  the  city 
with  a  dewy  freshness  on  his  mind,  and  with  the 
salt  air  reminiscent  in  the  tang  of  many  a  bracing 
thought. 

He  was  an  early  riser  at  Oakland,  and  the  late 
sleepers  were  often  wakened  by  his  quick  step  along 
the  garden  walks,  as  he  sallied  out  before  break- 
fast, under  his  broad-brimmed  Leghorn  hat,  to 
taste  the  sweetness  of  the  morning  air.  Little 
went  on  in  tree  or  shrub  or  flowering  plant  of 
which  he  was  not  weU  aware.  His  morning  greet- 
ing was  a*  benediction  upon  each  in  turn,  received 
after  the  night's  separation  as  new  gifts  from  God. 
His  simple  breakfast  eaten,  he  went  off  to  his  study 
for  an  hour's  meditation,  and  from  this  came  back 
to  lead  the  family  in  their  morning  prayers.  We 
have  no  happier  glimpse  of  him  than  as  engaged 
in  these,  the  Bible  open  on  his  knees,  some  child 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  377 

beside  him  whose  little  hand  he  guided,  as  he  read, 
across  the  page.  Strong  men  stood  in  awe  of  him, 
but  little  children  ran  into  his  arms.  "  Oh,  this  is 
heaven! "  said  one  whom  his  "benignant  gentleness  " 
had  completely  won,  and  another  in  a  competitive 
examination  as  to  what  heaven  would  be  like, 
said,  "  Newport  and  all  the  folks."  The  prayers 
were  no  conventional  exercises  of  devotion.  The 
Bible  reading  habitually  invited  some  brief  com- 
ment, expressed  in  (Parker's  the  phrase)  "  words 
so  deep  that  a  child  could  understand  them."  He 
was  never  more  a  child  himself  than  when  going 
down  with  all  that  he  could  muster  to  the  beach, 
there  to  catch  the  sharp  buffet  of  the  big  waves 
rolling  in.  Any  roughness  that  he  could  bear  was 
a  delight  to  him,  compensating  him  a  little  for 
that  scant  hundred  pounds  which  was  his  ordinary 
weight.  He  liked  to  ride  in  a  rough  farm  wagon 
and  be  well  shaken  up.  Happy  the  child  or  grown 
person  whom  he  invited  to  accompany  him  in  his 
quaint  old  "  one-horse  shay."  One  of  my  people 
remembers  meeting  him  on  one  of  these  excursions 
wearing  a  green  veil,  —  to  keep  the  dust  out  of  his 
throat.  He  was  driving  alone  when  he  met  Eliza- 
beth Buifum,^  then  a  little  girl  and  most  unhappy 
because  she  had  not  been  able  to  withstand  the  en- 
ticement of  a  ripe  peach  which  had  tempted  her 
over  a  garden  wall.  Channing  took  her  into  his 
chaise,  received  her  pitiful  confession,  and  induced 

^  Best  remembered  as  Elizabeth  Buffum  Chace,  a  woman  good 
to  know,  faithful  in  antislavery  and  in  all  good  reforms. 


378  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

her  to  go  with  him  and  make  it  to  the  owner  of  the 
peach-tree.  Her  daughter,  who  tells  me  this,  does 
not  tell  me  whether  the  pangs  of  remorse  antici- 
pated the  eating  of  the  fruit  or  followed  that  in 
due  course.  All  that  is  pleasantest  in  our  knowledge 
of  Channing's  early  life  comes  to  us  from  the  talk 
with  which  he  entertained  a  favored  guest  as  he 
drove  with  her  from  Portsmouth  to  Newport  and 
along  other  beautiful  Rhode  Island  ^  ways. 

Within  a  mile  of  the  homestead  there  was  a  lit- 
tle "  Christian  "  church^  upon  a  seaward  hill,  which 
was  open  to  preachers  of  all  sects,  but  to  no  one 
but  Channing  when  he  was  staying  at  Oakland.  It 
was  so  voted  every  year.  Fishermen  and  farmers 
made  up  the  congregation,  in  which  Channing  took 
sincere  delight.  The  preaching  here  was  extempore 
and  of  a  simplicity  which  we  are  told  was  very 
beautiful,  but  there  is  no  record  of  it  remaining. 
It  troubled  Channing  that  it  drew  fashionable  peo- 
ple from  Newport  to  overhear  it.  Simple  as  it 
was,  some  of  the  ruder  sort  could  not  endure  the 
strain,  and  would  go  out,  take  a  turn  round  the 
meeting  house,  and  come  back  refreshed  and  ready 

1  "  My  residence,"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Baillie,  "  is  in  the  very 
centre  of  this  beautiful  island,  five  miles  from  the  town  [New- 
port]. ...  In  natural  beauty  my  island  does  not  seem  to  me 
inferior  to  your  Isle  of  Wight.  In  cultivation  it  will  bear  no  com- 
parison. .  .  .  Here  I  spend  four  or  five  months  annually,  enjoying^ 
my  tranquillity  almost  too  much ;  almost  reproaching  myself  for 
being  so  happy,  when  I  am  doing  so  little  for  the  happiness  of 
others." 

2  Still  occupied  by  a  *'  Christian  ' '  Society,  the  most  thriving  on 
the  island  outside  of  Newport. 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  379 

for  a  little  more  instruction  in  righteousness.  Sun- 
day morning  often  found  Channing  in  the  Newport 
church  after  its  dedication  to  Unitarian  uses,  in 
1835.  When  the  covenant  was  submitted  to  his 
approval,  he  objected  to  the  expression,  "  believing 
in  one  God,  the  Father,"  fearing,  says  Mr.  Brooks, 
that  the  anti-Trinitarian  phrase  "  might,  by  any 
soul,  be  felt  to  carry  with  it  a  rigid  and  frigid  ex- 
clusiveness,  and  set  orthodoxy  of  opinion  above  the 
filial  and  fraternal  spirit."  Once  a  year,  at  least, 
Channing  preached  for  his  young  friend,  and  once 
he  turned  to  good  account  the  stamping  of  the 
horses,  outside.  Speaking  of  the  indifference  of 
the  wealthy  to  the  moral  evil  in  the  community,  he 
said,  "  They  are  as  indifferent  to  it  as  the  very 
animals  that  stand  waiting  for  them  at  the  church 
door."  He  not  only  gave  Mr.  Brooks  the  charge 
at  his  ordination,  the  same  as  that  to  John  S. 
Dwight  (see  "  Works  "),  but  he  officiated  at  his 
marriage.  Carefully  bestowed  in  the  bridegroom's 
pocket  was  a  wedding  ring,  but  on  the  way  to 
church  Channing  inquired  if  that  symbol  might 
not  be  dispensed  with.  Mr.  Brooks  immediately 
assented.  The  lady  was  not  consulted,  any  more 
than  the  notorious  Frenchwoman  as  to  whether 
she  would  be  born.  She  told  me  that  her  good 
opinion  of  Dr.  Channing  was  sensibly  diminished 
by  that  summary  treatment  of  her  wishes  as  a 
negligible  quantity. 

There  are  those  who  have  the  gift  of  making 
friends,  but  no  corresponding  power  of  keeping 


380  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

them.  Channing  reversed  this  order.  His  friends, 
in  any  intimate  sense,  were  few,  but  their  friend- 
ship was  of  long  continuance,  only  death  severing 
the  bond.  We  have  apparently  exhausted  the  hst 
when  we  have  named  Jonathan  Phillips  and  Joseph 
Tuckerman :  adding  Charles  Pollen  from  a  date 
not  long  subsequent  to  his  arrival  in  this  country. 
And  Phillips  and  Tuckerman  were  Channing's 
college  mates,  and  his  friendship  with  them  began 
under  the  coUege  elms.  "  Know  him  ?  "  said  Dr. 
Tuckerman.  "  He,  Mr.  Phillips,  and  I  are  like 
three  spirits  in  one."  They  were  three  little  men, 
and  in  conversation  their  thin  voices  were  high- 
pitched,  and  they  often  talked  with  so  much  ear- 
nestness and  vehemence  that  to  those  in  an  adjoin- 
ing room  they  seemed  to  be  quarrelling.  And,  in- 
deed, their  talk  was  no  "  mush  of  concession."  Dr. 
Tuckerman  sometimes  got  out  of  patience  with  Dr. 
Channing  for  thinking  so  much  of  his  preaching, 
and  saving  himself  for  it,  and  Dr.  Channing,  as  we 
have  seen,  challenged  Dr.  Tuckerman' s  effusiveness 
and  demanded  proof  that  he  was  not  pitying  away 
poor  people's  self-reliance.  The  friendship  of  these 
men  was  based  upon  a  common  interest  in  great 
moral  and  social  questions.  We  find  no  element 
of  cordiahty  in  their  relations.  Dr.  Channing's 
letters  to  Dr.  Tuckerman  are  careful  disquisitions ; 
they  have  nothing  of  the  freedom,  spontaneity,  and 
variety  which  assure  to  personal  correspondence  its 
interest  and  charm.  Channing's  admiration  for 
Mr.  Phillips  was  very  great ;  he  thought  him  "  a 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  381 

remarkable  man."  "  He  is  one  of  the  intuitive  men 
whom  I  take  delight  in  much  more  than  in  the 
merely  logical."  Mr.  Phillips's  estimate  of  Chan- 
ning  was  one  of  Emerson's  favorite  examples  of 
what  understatement  could  effect.  Speaking  of 
Channing  in  a  circle  of  his  admirers,  Mr.  Phillips 
said,  "  I  have  known  him  long,  I  have  studied  his 
character,  and  I  believe  him  capable  of  virtue." 
In  his  college  days,  Phillips  was  sceptical  and  athe- 
istic. Later,  by  way  of  Bacon,  he  came  round 
to  Christianity,  joined  Channing's  church,  and 
became  one  of  his  deacons.  His  early  influence 
on  Channing  was  depressing.  "  His  was  an  imagi- 
nation that  hung  the  whole  universe  in  crape." 
There  were  recurrent  periods  of  pessimistic  gloom, 
with  threatenings  of  mental  aberration.  His  spe- 
cial care  for  Dr.  Channing  was  to  preserve  him 
from  the  ecclesiastical  temper.  Paradoxical  as  it 
may  seem,  he  sometimes  found  Dr.  Channing  hy- 
perclerical,  and  would  say  to  him,  "  You  know, 
you  are  a  clergyman."  Miss  Peabody  recollected 
Channing  as  once  replying  with  some  sharpness, 
"  Yes,  I  know  it,  and  always  remember  the  dis- 
advantage." 

Channing's  friendship  with  Dr.  Pollen  dated 
from  1827,  when  Miss  Cabot,  the  noble  woman 
whom  Dr.  Pollen  married,  brought  him  to  one  of 
Channing's  conversational  meetings.  The  subject 
was  the  death  of  Jesus,  and  Dr.  Pollen  took  part 
in  the  discussion.  Silence  followed  his  remarks, 
until  Channing  rose  abruptly,  and  with  unconscious 


382  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

eagerness  pulled  out  his  watch.  Upon  this  hint, 
the  company  broke  up,  and  Channing,  making  a 
push  for  Dr.  Follen,  seized  his  hand,  and  said, 
"  Sir,  we  must  know  each  other  better."  The 
friendship  thus  begun  grew  warmer  till  the  tragic 
end.  It  was  through  Follen  that  Channing  made 
his  closest  approaches  to  the  Abolitionists,  with 
whom  Follen  identified  himself,  holding  their  doc- 
trines with  some  personal  modifications.  I  have 
seemed  to  find  in  Channing' s  later  thought  more 
of  FoUen's  than  of  any  other  personal  influence. 
Those  tendencies  in  his  preaching  which  were  de- 
plored as  transcendental  were  quite  surely,  in  some 
measure,  developments  of  germs  which  fell  into 
his  own  from  Follen' s  fruitful  mind. 

Channing' s  literary  friendships  were  without 
any  sentimental  implication  whatsoever.  His  let- 
ters to  the  Misses  Roscoe,  to  Miss  Martineau,  to 
Miss  BaiUie,  to  Mrs.  Hemans,  to  Miss  Aikin,  and 
other  English  friends,  have,  as  a  rule,  no  personal 
warmth.  They  are  serene  and  delicate  disclosures 
of  his  thought  upon  the  great  social  and  religious 
themes  which  were  never  absent  from  his  mind. 
But  to  Miss  Martineau,  soon  after  her  return  to 
England,  he  wrote,  in  answer  to  a  letter  from  her 
that  touched  him  with  its  pecuhar  kindness,  "I 
thank  you  for  this  expression  of  your  heart.  With- 
out the  least  tendency  to  distrust,  without  the  least 
dejection  at  the  idea  of  neglect,  with  entire  grati- 
tude for  my  lot,  1  still  feel  that  I  have  not  the 
power  which  so  many  others  have  of  awakening 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  383 

love,  except  in  a  very  narrow  circle.  I  knew  that 
I  enjoyed  your  esteem,  but  I  expected  to  fade  with 
my  native  land,  not  from  your  thought,  but  from 
your  heart.  Your  letter  satisfies  me  that  I  have 
one  more  friend  in  England."  It  is  a  pathetic, 
almost  tragical  appearance  that  Channing  presents 
to  us,  —  isolated  at  once  by  his  own  diffidence, 
"  this  tyrant  which  has  palsied  and  unmanned  me 
often  enough,"  and  by  the  awe  which  he  inspired 
by  his  impressive  moral  elevation.  Both  feared 
and  fearful,  it  is  not  strange  that  once  we  find  him 
crying  out  upon  his  lonely  life  with  passionate  re- 
gret. 

He  enjoyed  much  companionship  for  which 
"  friendship "  would  be  too  large  a  designation. 
Such  was  his  relation  with  Lydia  Maria  Child, 
with  Dorothea  Dix,  and  with  Elizabeth  Peabody. 
From  him,  but  more  from  his  impassioned  col- 
league. Dr.  Gannett,  Miss  Dix  took  gratefully 
that  sacred  fire  with  which  she  sought  to  illumi- 
nate the  darkness  of  disordered  minds.  Miss  Pea- 
body's  relation  to  Channing  remains  somewhat 
enigmatical  when  we  arrive  at  her  last  page.  Clearly 
she  was  most  serviceable  to  him,  but  sometimes 
superserviceable.  She  copied  forty  of  his  sermons, 
he,  meantime,  translating  Plato's  dialogues  to  her 
out  of  a  French  version  into  his  own  lucidity  of 
phrase.  He  doubted  her  ability  to  copy,  and  at 
the  same  time  attend  to  his  translation.  No  won- 
der, but  she  convinced  him  she  was  equal  to  the 
test.     But  if  Channing's  patience  with  her  chirp 


384  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

and  twitter  was  so  complete  as  we  are  permitted  to 
infer  from  her  report,  it  must  have  been  a  virtue 
of  peculiar  strength.  A  few  times  it  failed  him, 
when  she  brought  to  him  the  gossip  of  the  town  : 
once  that  Garrison  had  said  that  he  was  "  living  in 
luxury  on  the  price  of  human  blood,"  and  again  that 
he  was  penurious  and  had  accepted  her  service  with- 
out proper  recognition  and  reward.  In  regard  to 
the  former  item,  Channing  asked,  "  Have  you  any 
authority  but  rumor  for  saying  that  Garrison  made 
the  gross  charge  against  me  ?  To  rumor  I  give  no 
weight.  I  do  not  believe  that  he  said  this."  ^  Re- 
garding the  second  charge,  Channing  wrote,  "  Is 
it  not  possible  that  you  talked  confusedly  of  your 
circumstances  and  your  copying  for  me,  so  that 
some  one's  stupidity  misconstrued  your  language 
into  an  imputation  on  my  honor  ?  .  .  .  But  can- 
not you  avoid  talking  about  me  ?  .  .  .  Miss  Mar- 
tineau  was  not  so  much  to  blame.  I  find  by  her 
letter  to  me  that  there  is  a  very  strong  and  wide 
impression  of  my  personal  meanness  in  the  expend- 
iture of  money.  There  is,  indeed,  no  point  of 
character  on  which  I  should  not  sooner  have  ex- 
pected an  attack.  .  .  .  Money  has  always  seemed 
to  me  what  it  is,  and  so  little  value  have  I  attached 

1  Miss  Peabody  adds,  "  I  think  it  appeared  in  the  Liberator." 
If  so,  it  has  escaped  the  patient  scrutiny  of  Mr.  W.  P.  Garrison. 
The  charge  was  based  on  the  fact  that  Channing's  father-in-law, 
Mr.  Gibbs,  of  Newport,  owned  a  distilleiy,  and  sold  his  rum 
(Channing  is  speaking)  '*  to  a  firm  supposed  to  be  engaged  in  the 
slave-trade."  The  rumor,  probably,  intended  that  the  rum  was 
exchanged  for  slaves  according  to  the  custom  of  the  time. 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  385 

to  it,  that  I  cannot  ascribe  to  myself  any  merit  or 
virtue  for  giving  it  away.  My  principle  is  to  spend 
my  whole  income,  without  reserving  anything.  For 
me  to  accumulate  would  be  morally  wrong."  We 
have,  in  another  letter,  the  means  of  adjusting  this 
statement  with  Channing's  relation  to  his  wife's 
property.  That  he  always  considered  exclusively 
her  own,  and  congratulated  himself  on  his  freedom 
from  her  financial  cares.  But  to  save  nothing  was 
her  rule  as  well  as  his.  The  injurious  report  seems 
to  have  arisen  in  the  spite  of  some  person  whose 
vanity  he  had  offended.  ^^ 

The  last  years  of  Channing's  life  were  enriched 
by  a  correspondence  with  Joseph  Blanco  White,  a 
man  of  profound  rehgious  nature  and  of  a  religious 
experience  so  wide  that  it  included  Koman  Catholi- 
cism and  an  anti-supernatural  Christianity  within 
its  two  extremes.  His  best  title  ^  to  fame  is  his 
great  sonnet  "  To  Night,"  one  of  the  most  perfect 
sonnets  in  English  literature,  though  written  by  a 
man  of  Spanish  birth  and  education.  His  "  Life," 
edited  by  J.  H.  Thom,  mainly  autobiographical,  is 
one  of  the  most  significant  disclosures  of  religious 
experience  ^  ever  given  to  the  world.    White's  pro- 

1  Another  is  his  leading-  part  as  a  friend  and  aider  of  Dr. 
Thomas  Arnold  and  a  founder  of  the  Broad  Church  School  in 
the  English  Church.  See  passim,  R.  W.  Church's  Oxford  Move- 
ment. 

2  Published  in  1845.  It  was  Lucre tia  Mott's  most  precious 
book,  and  as  such,  she  held  it  in  her  hand  when  having  her  por- 
trait painted.  She  gave  me  her  copy  a  few  years  before  her 
death,  when  the  book  had  become  extremely  rare.  I  have  no 
possession  that  I  value  more. 


386  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

longed  sickness  and  suffering  gave  ample  scope  to 
Channing's  sympathy.  In  one  of  his  earlier  let- 
ters he  writes,  "  So  long  as  we  can  think  clearly, 
we  can  carry  on  the  great  work  of  life,  we  can 
turn  suffering  to  a  glorious  account,  we  can  gather 
from  new  triumphs  over  the  body  a  new  conscious- 
ness of  the  divinity  of  the  spirit."  In  a  later  one, 
"  Your  experience  differs  from  mine,  for  I  have 
had  little  acute  pain.  I  do  not  know  that  I  ever 
suggested  to  you  a  fancy  that  has  sometimes  come 
into  my  head.  I  have  thought  that,  by  analyzing 
a  pain,  I  have  been  able  to  find  an  element  of 
pleasure  in  it.  I  have  thought,  too,  that,  by  look- 
ing a  pain  fully  in  the  face  and  comprehending  it, 
I  have  diminished  its  intensity.  Distinct  percep- 
tion, instead  of  aggi'avating,  decreases  evil.  .  .  . 
The  power  of  distinct  knowledge  in  giving  courage 
I  have  never  seen  insisted  on,  and  yet  it  is  a  part 
of  my  experience."  In  the  same  letter  there  is  a 
good  criticism  of  Don  Quixote.  He  venerates  the 
knight  too  much  to  lawgh  at  him,  and  wonders  if 
Cervantes,  beginning  with  a  lower  conception,  did 
not  find  a  higher  stealing  on  him  as  he  went  along. 
After  the  death  ,of  White,  Channing  wrote  an 
English  friend,  "  Perhaps  you  hardly  knew  how 
dear  he  was  to  me.  I  had  never  seen  him,  but  the 
imagination  and  the  heart  had  woven  a  tie  as  strong 
as  real  intercourse  produces."  The  "  Life "  of 
Blanco  White  is  much  fuller  than  the  Channing 
"  Memoirs  "  in  its  revelation  of  the  mutual  regards 
of  these  truth-loving  souls.     It  has  the  advantage 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  387 

of  producing  both  sides  of  the  correspondence. 
This  was  Channing's  closest  contact  with  a  non- 
miraculous  Christianity.  He  held  fast  the  integ- 
rity of  his  own  position,  saying,  "  I  need  miracles 
less  now  than  formerly  ;  but  could  I  have  got 
where  I  am,  had  not  miracles  entered  into  the  past 
history  of  the  world?"  ("Yes,  indeed  !  "  writes 
Lucretia  Mott  in  the  margin.)  Throughout  the 
correspondence  White  impresses  us  as  the  acuter 
intellect,  but  not  as  the  more  open  mind.  Chan- 
ning's final  impression  of  White  appears  in  a  letter 
to  Mr.  Thom,  White's  most  intimate  Unitarian 
friend  and  biographer :  — 

I  have  sometimes  observed  on  the  beach,  which  I 
am  in  the  habit  of  visiting,  a  solemn,  unceasing  under- 
tone, quite  distinct  from  the  clashings  of  the  separate, 
successive  waves  ;  and  so  in  certain  minds  I  observe  a 
deep  undertone  of  truth,  even  where  they  express  par- 
ticular views  which  seem  to  me  discordant  or  false.  I 
had  always  this  feeling  about  Mr.  White.  I  could  not 
always  agree  with  him,  but  I  felt  that  he  never  lost  his 
grasp  of  the  greatest  truths. 

In  general,  Channing's  correspondence  with  Eng- 
lish Unitarians  must  have  done  much  to  modify 
his  impression  of  their  character.  They  were  the 
people  who  knew  and  honored  Garrison,  and  they 
brought  to  Channing  a  sympathy  with  his  anti- 
slavery  sentiments  which  shamed  the  apathy  of 
his  Boston  parishioners  and  friends,  and  atoned  for 
certain  theological  defects.  If  the  Priestley  tradi- 
tion was  materialistic  and  necessarian  on  the  intel- 


388  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

lectual  side,  on  the  moral  side  it  always  made  for 
political  and  religious  liberty  and  for  humane  sym- 
pathies with  the  victims  of  injustice  and  oppres- 
sion ;  and  these  things  counted  as  the  ''  weightier 
matters  "  in  the  scales  of  Channing's  habitual  dis- 
crimination. 

At  this  stage  of  my  attention  to  the  personal 
aspect  of  Channing's  life,  a  generahzed  conception 
of  the  man  may  not  be  out  of  place.  What  are 
the  conspicuous  physical  and  intellectual  and  moral 
notes  that  constitute  the  impression  which  we  have 
so  far  received?  First,  an  ill-constituted  body. 
Certainly  that ;  and,  while  we  must  concede  some 
gracious  quality  to  his  defect,  —  the  delicacy  and 
refinement  that  are  the  pallid  flowers  of  such  an 
organization,  —  he  was  condemned  by  it  to  a  clois- 
tered virtue,  lacking  the  red  blood  that  would  have 
carried  him  out  into  the  big  world  and  have  given 
color  to  his  style,  concreteness  to  his  illustrations, 
experience  to  his  abstract  morality,  greater  effec- 
tiveness to  his  social  and  public  influence.  It  is 
hard  to  strike  the  balance,  but  it  is  permitted  us 
to  believe  that  without  being  differently  made,  just 
with  his  natural  health  unspoiled,  he  would  have 
been  —  I  play  with  Matthew  Arnold's  phrase  — 
a  not  less  beautiful  but  more  effectual  angel,  bear- 
ing upon  his  luminous  wings  a  fuller  message  to 
mankind. 

Intellectually,  Channing  has  enjoyed  the  emi- 
nence which,  like  that  of  an  isolated  mountain,  is 
relative  to  the  low-lying  plain.     His  measure  was 


THE  PERSONAL  ASPECT  389 

taken  at  a  time  when  Boston  was  emerging  from 
an  intellectual  mediocrity  to  which  Fisher  Ames 
bulked  as  another  Burke  or  Cicero  or  Demosthenes, 
while  denominational  pride  did  much  to  aggravate 
the  miscalculation  and  to  pass  it  on.  But,  com- 
pared with  the  great  intellects  of  the  centuries,  his 
intellectual  ability  makes  as  modest  an  appearance 
as  his  intellectual  acquirements  compared  with 
those  of  the  great  scholars.  We  have  only  to  com- 
pare him  with  Martineau,  to  find  him  vastly  over- 
topped. He  had  moral,  not  intellectual,  imagina- 
tion, and  his  reputation  for  poetical  sensibility  and 
expression  reflects  the  meagreness  of  American 
poetry  in  his  time.  The  passages  in  his  works  that 
were  esteemed  poetical  by  his  contemporaries  now 
affect  us  as  rhetorical.  His  strength  as  a  writer 
was  quite  independent  of  those  curious  felicities  of 
style  which  make  a  picture  for  the  eye,  a  tremor 
for  the  heart.  On  the  other  hand,  his  was  a  re- 
markable sanity  of  mind,  incapable,  for  example,  of 
those  vagaries  which  disfigured  the  more  powerful 
intellect  of  Priestley  with  incidents  that  were  gro- 
tesque.^ 

He  gave  to  Christian  supernaturalism  so  rational 
an  interpretation  that  for  as  many  as  believed  with 
him  it  lost  all  its  grossness.  He  had  a  genius  for 
prolonged  and  serious  meditation,  and  this  it  was 
that  gave  to  his  thought  a  personal  quality,  a  real- 

^  Such  as  his  predicting  the  second  coming  of  Jesus  within 
twenty  years,  and  his  finding  prophecies  of  Nelson  and  Napoleon 
in  the  Old  Testament ! 


390  WILLIAM  ELLERY   CHANNING 

ity,  that  is  not  to  be  escaped.  Much  in  the  body 
of  his  speculative  opinion  we  can  parallel  in  the 
writings  of  his  contemporaries  and  near  predeces- 
sors; but  before  he  called  it  his,  and  passed  it  on 
as  such,  he  brought  to  it  the  brooding  tests  of  many 
silent  hours.  He  made  it  his  own  by  the  serious- 
ness and  intensity  of  his  appropriation.  This  in- 
tellectual virtue  was  at  the  bottom  of  that  oracular 
manner  in  which  many  found  the  pride  of  intel- 
lectual superiority.^  It  will  not  do  to  say  that  his 
persistent  "  I "  meant  nothing  more  than  that  he 
was  speaking  for  himself  and  relieving  others  of 
responsibility.  It  also  meant  that  he  was  speaking 
from  the  depth  of  personal  conviction ;  that  with  a 
great  price  he  had  bought  this  freedom  from  the 
bondage  of  contemporary  sect  and  creed. 

But  Channing's  preeminence  in  his  own  genera- 
tion, and  his  abiding  claim  upon  our  admiration 
and  our  reverence  are  far  less  intellectual  than 
moral  and  spiritual.  It  is  in  fact  the  moral  temper 
of  his  mind,  its  openness  to  fresh  conviction,  that 
is  its  most  impressive  trait.  The  moral  uses  of 
the  intellect  were  to  him  subjects  of  his  constant 
interest.  That  miserable  antithesis  of  intellect  and 
virtue,  in  which  weak-minded  persons  frequently 
indulge,  had  for  him  no  attraction.  It  was  signifi- 
cant that  "  mind  "  was  his  inclusive  word,  taking 
up   intellect    and    conscience    into    its    capacious 

1  While  yet  it  would  have  been  strange  had  not  the  immense 
homage  paid  to  him  as  a  great  spiritual  director  infected  his  self- 
consciousness  to  an  appreciable  degree. 


THE  PERSONAL   ASPECT  391 

breadth.  Intellect  and  morals  existed  for  him  only 
in  an  indissoluble  unity.  But  spirituality  was  his 
most  characteristic  note.  He  was  not  under  the 
law,  but  under  grace.  He  was  in  love  with  good- 
ness, enamoured  of  perfection.  He  was  a  man  of 
the  beatitudes,  so  many  of  them  found  abundant 
illustration  in  the  habits  of  his  life.  The  blessing 
of  the  peacemakers  was  upon  him ;  the  blessing  of 
the  pure  in  heart.  But  his  peculiar  blessing  was 
that  of  those  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  right- 
eousness. If  Channing  did  not  do  this,  no  man 
ever  did.  And,  according  to  the  promise,  he  was 
fiUed. 

This  brings  us  to  the  most  interesting  and  sug- 
gestive criticism  ever  made  on  Channing,  that  of 
the  anonymous  critic  who  said,  "  He  was  kept  from 
the  highest  goodness  by  his  love  of  rectitude."  This 
meant,  perhaps,  that  morbid  introspection  of  his 
conduct  checked  his  spontaneity ;  that  he  wasted 
in  trying  to  he  good  the  strength  which  had  been 
spent  to  better  advantage  in  trying  to  do  good.  It 
is  doubtful  if  this  criticism  ever  fairly  applied  to 
Channing.  In  his  most  introspective  period,  he 
brought  his  being  good  to  the  test  of  doing  good 
with  unswerving  resolution.  But  if  the  meaning 
was  that  Channing' s  passion  for  the  perfect  form 
of  social  rectitude  kept  him  back  from  that  "  high- 
est goodness  "  which  is  coextensive  with  the  best 
practicable  course  of  action,  the  criticism  may, 
perhaps,  be  accepted  as  a  valid  one.  The  indicated 
fault  is  not,  however,  one  from  which  society  or  the 


392  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

individual  suffers  mucli.  They  suffer  every  day 
an  hundred  times  as  much  from  a  too  easy  accept- 
ance of  an  imperfect  form  of  action  as  the  best  to 
which  they  can  attain.  They  make  the  practicable 
the  excuse  for  avoidable  misdoing,  the  grave  of  the 
ideal. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   LAST    STAGE 

Channing's  mother  had  died  May  25, 1834,  the 
period  of  her  widowhood  having  extended  over 
more  than  forty  years.  She  was  buried  in  the 
Cambridge  churchyard  by  her  mother's  side,  —  the 
mother  who  had  died  so  young.  Channing's  life 
had  been  closely  interknit  with  his  mother's.  Al- 
ways, when  returning  from  Newport,  he  went 
straight  to  her  for  a  long  talk,  and  thereafter 
counted  that  day  almost  as  bad  as  lost  that  did  not 
find  him  at  her  side.  The  day  after  her  death, 
writing  to  a  friend,  he  cried  out :  "  Who  can  be 
to  me  what  she  has  been?  To  whom  can  I  be 
what  I  have  been  to  her  ?  "  He  could  think  of  her 
last  years  with  great  pleasure  and  thankfulness. 
"  Her  character  seemed  to  improve,  which  is  not 
the  ordinary  experience  of  age : "  he  must  be  the 
moral  judge  even  in  his  filial  sorrow.  "  She  ex- 
tended, instead  of  narrowing,  her  interests,  and 
found  an  increasing  happiness  in  her  social  affec- 
tions," Her  conversational  vivacity  attracted  many 
friends,  "  yet  it  never  seemed  to  enter  her  mind 
that  she  was  capable  of  giving  pleasure.  She 
ascribed  to  the  pure  good  wiU  of  others  what  was 


391  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

chiefly  owing  to  herself.  I  look  on  her  last  days 
as  her  best  days.  .  .  .  The  winter  of  her  age 
seemed  warmed  and  brightened  with  the  fervor 
of  youthful  feeling." 

It  was,  perhaps,  Channing's  sense  that,  by  the 
death  of  his  mother,  he  had  become  the  head  of  the 
family,  which  instigated  him  soon  after  that  event 
to  establish  himself  in  his  own  house,  a  new  and 
spacious  one,^  on  land  which  the  Gibbs  mansion 
had  to  spare.  In  June,  1835,  we  find  him  writing 
to  a  friend  :  — 

So  you  are  building  a  house.  By  what  sympathy  is 
it  that  we  are  both  carrying  on  the  same  work  at  once  ? 
I  hope,  however,  your  practical  wisdom  has  kept  you 
from  my  error.  My  house  threatens  to  swell  beyond 
my  means,  so  that  I  cannot  think  of  it  with  a  perfectly 
quiet  conscience.  This  is  the  only  point  in  which  I  am 
in  danger  of  extravagance.  I  spend  nothing  on  luxu- 
ries, amusements,  shows.  My  food  is  the  simplest ;  my 
clothes  sometimes  call  for  rebuke  from  affectionate 
friends,  not  for  their  want  of  neatness,  but  for  their 
venerable  age.  But  one  indulgence  I  want,  —  a  good 
house,  open  to  the  sun  and  air,  with  apartments  large 
enough  for  breathing  freely,  and  commanding  some- 
thing of  earth  and  sky.  A  friend  of  mine  repeated  to 
me  the  saying  of  a  child,  —  "  Mother,  the  country  has 
more  sky  than  the  town."  Now  I  want  sky,  and  my 
house,  though  in  a  city,  gives  me  a  fine  sweep  of  pro- 
spect, and  an  air  almost  as  free  as  the  country. 

^  No.  83  Mt.  Vernon  Street.  Quite  recently,  Mr.  William  H. 
Baldwin  occupied  it  for  some  years,  and  few  could  have  enjoyed 
that  privilege  with  more  reverent  appreciation.  Mr.  Baldwin's 
service  in  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Union  has  been  exactly  in 
the  line  of  one  of  Channing's  dearest  hopes. 


THE  LAST  STAGE  395 

Given  "  a  good  house  "  and  ample  sky,  and  he 
could  say,  *'  I  wish  more  and  more  a  simple,  unos- 
tentatious way  of  living.  .  .  .  My  aim  is  to  spend 
nothing  on  myseK  which  health  and  usefulness 
do  not  require.  .  .  .  Were  I  entering  on  life, 
instead  of  approaching  its  end,  with  my  present 
views  and  feelings,  and  with  no  ties,  I  should 
strive  for  a  condition  which,  without  severing  me 
from  society,  would  leave  me  more  free  to  act  from 
my  own  spirit,  to  follow  faithfully  and  uncompro- 
misingly the  highest  manifestations  of  virtue  made 
to  my  mind.  ...  I  cannot  wear  costly  garments 
when  I  see  such  a  man  as  Allston  scarcely  able  to 
live.  What  a  disgrace  it  is  to  Boston  that  the 
greatest  genius  of  this  country  in  his  department 
should  be  in  want !  Millions  are  spent  on  decora- 
tion every  year,  but  nothing  is  given  to  him.  I 
would  have  our  private  dwellings  simple,  but  our 
public  edifices  magnificent  models  of  taste,  and 
ornaments  to  the  city.  I  would  have  a  public 
gallery  freely  open.  We  should  not  keep  pictures 
at  home,  or  more  than  one,  perhaps,  and  the  rest 
should  be  for  the  community.  .  .  .  The  way  to  be 
comfortable  here  is  to  live  simply."  He  deprecated 
expensive  furniture  as  of  the  least  possible  value, 
but  several  articles  of  his  that  I  have  seen  are 
very  beautiful,  and  would  be  highly  appreciated 
by  those  in  search  of  "  heirlooms,  but  not  of  their 
own  family."  It  is  evident  that  his  simple  tastes 
were  sometimes  inhibited  by  a  higher  power. 
Boston  had  grown  (1835)  to  be  a  city  of  77,000 


396  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

inhabitants,  yet  some  people  were  not  satisfied. 
They  wanted  a  railroad  to  connect  the  city  with 
the  West,  and  double  the  population.  "  What 
good  is  to  come  from  this  great  accumulation  of 
people  I  do  not  see."  "  But  if  I  did  not  love  and 
honor  Boston,  I  would  say  nothing  of  its  defects. 
...  1  would  leave  it  for  no  other  place  under 
heaven."  The  pessimists,  despairing  of  progress, 
were,  he  said,  its  greatest  bane. 

Exhilarated  by  his  morning  bath,  he  often  had 
some  early  hours  of  glowing  mental  satisfaction. 
His  first  business  was  to  write  down  the  good 
thoughts  that  had  come  to  him  in  his  sleepless 
hours ;  the  next  to  read  a  chapter  or  two  of  the 
New  Testament  in  the  original  Greek ;  these  things 
before  breakfast,  after  which  he  led  the  morning 
devotions,  in  no  perfunctory  manner,  and  then 
went  to  his  study.  Jonathan  Edwards,  on  his 
meditative  walks,  used  to  pin  pieces  of  white  paper 
to  his  clothes  to  keep  his  better  thoughts  in  mind. 
He  must  have  come  home  looking  like  a  feathered 
creature.  Channing  was  content  to  interleave  his 
books  with  slips  of  paper,  on  which,  reading  with 
pen  in  hand,  he  wrote  the  criticisms  and  sugges- 
tions proper  to  the  book  under  his  eye.  These  slips 
were  afterward  assorted  and  labelled  with  much 
care.  He  waited  patiently  for  his  better  hours  of 
final  composition,  and  did  not  force  his  mood.  "  I 
have  great  faith,"  he  said,  "  in  inspiration ;  but  it 
is  a  fruit  and  reward  of  faithful  toil,  not  a  chance 
influence  entirely  out  of  our  power."     Once  he 


THE  LAST  STAGE  397 

had  written  anything,  and  more  especially  when 
he  had  printed  it,  he  dismissed  it  from  his  thoughts, 
comparing  himself  to  the  bird  that  no  longer  cares 
for  her  offspring  when  they  have  taken  flight. 

Noon  found  the  morning's  joyful  vigor  spent, 
and  then  he  welcomed  Jonathan  Phillips  for  a  walk 
along  the  Common's  pleasant  edge  ;  before  coming 
home  browsing  awhile  in  the  Athenaeum  over  the 
foreign  papers  and  reviews,  and  visiting  parishion- 
ers, especially  such  as  were  in  poverty  or  any  per- 
sonal distress.  After  dinner,  he  took  to  the  sofa  and 
invited  sleep,  but  often  found  the  goddess  invita. 
At  sunset,  he  betook  himself  to  some  upper  chamber, 
where  he  could  look  out  over  Charles  River's  broad 
expanse,  and  the  wide  sweep  of  the  hills  to  which 
he  had  lifted  up  his  eyes  under  Judge  Dana's 
willows  in  his  college  days.  In  the  spring  and 
autumn,  his  habit  was  to  share  this  quiet  hour 
with  others,  but  in  the  winter  twilights  he  liked 
best  to  be  alone,  —  "  alone  with  the  Alone."  Of 
the  employment  of  his  evening  hours,  enough  has 
been  said  already.  Miss  Peabody's  "  Reminis- 
cences "  gives  the  best  account  of  it. 

In  many  ways  the  later  years  of  Channlng's  life 
were  years  of  widening  sympathies,  of  a  *'  less  min- 
isterial and  more  manly"  habit  of  thought  and 
speech,  of  wistful  eagerness  to  come  in  contact 
with  a  more  various  activity,  intellectual,  social, 
and  political.  Hence  the  "  SeK-Culture  "  lec- 
ture in  the  Franklin  course  in  1838,  and  the  dou- 
ble lecture,  "  On  the  Elevation  of  the  Laboring 


398  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Classes  "  in  1840,  the  two  best  expressions  of  Ms 
mind  in  its  reaction  on  tlie  social  problems  of  his 
time.  His  lecture  on  "War,"  in  1838,  goes  to 
the  same  account,  and  his  several  later  ventures 
into  the  antislavery  field.  The  year  1841  was  not 
a  fruitful  one  for  him  in  a  general  way.  He  suf- 
fered, in  Newport,  from  a  protracted  and  severe 
illness.  He  was  conspicuously  absent,  as  we  have 
seen,  from  the  ministrations  of  the  Federal  Street 
church.  He  added  nothing  to  his  antislavery  file. 
But  the  month  of  May  that  year  justified  for  him 
the  high  confidence  of  Emerson  in  May's  rejuve- 
nating power.  It  took  him  to  Philadelphia,  where, 
for  some  weeks  apparently,  he  was  the  guest  of 
Dr.  Furness,  and  where  he  delivered  two  of  his 
most  notable  addresses,  "  The  Present  Age,"  May 
11,  before  the  Mercantile  Library  Company,  and 
"  The  Church,"  Sunday,  May  80,  before  Dr.  Fur- 
ness's  people.  We  have  some  particulars  which 
concern  the  former  from  Dr.  Furness's  own  hand. 
Having  seldom  spoken  in  other  places  than  churches, 
Channing  was  not  much  used  to  applause,  and  Dr. 
Furness,  being  afraid  that  it  would  disconcert  him, 
warned  him  of  what  he  might  expect.  "  Oh,"  said 
he,  afterward,  when  Dr.  Furness  referred  to  it  as 
genuine  and  hearty,  "  it  did  me  good."  Midway 
of  the  address,  without  the  least  embarrassment,  he 
said  that  he  would  sit  down  and  rest  awhile.  He 
did  so,  and  presently  resumed  his  course  without 
having  lost  his  grip.  When  he  spoke  of  Franklin's 
kite,  says  Dr.  Furness,  "  We  all  saw  it  floating, 


THE  LAST  STAGE  399 

white,  afar  off  in  the  darkness."  What  Channing 
said  (misquoted  by  Dr.  Furness)  was,  that  "  the 
kite  which  brought  lightning  from  heaven,  will  be 
seen  sailing  in  the  clouds  by  remote  posterity,  when 
the  city  where  Franklin  dwelt  may  be  known  only 
by  its  ruins."  If  this  allusion  flattered  local  pride, 
there  were  other  passages  that  had  a  quite  different 
effect.  Philadelphia  was  not  then  the  stronghold 
of  protectionism  which  it  is  now,  but  "the  Ameri- 
can system  "  was  even  then  no  "  infant  industry." 
The  applause  which  did  Channing  good  could 
hardly  have  responded  to  his  exclamation,  "  Free 
trade !  this  is  the  plain  duty  and  plain  interest  of 
the  human  race."  He  went  on,  "  To  level  all  bar- 
riers to  free  exchange  ;  to  cut  up  the  system  of 
restriction  root  and  branch  ;  to  open  every  port  on 
earth  to  every  product,  —  this  is  the  office  of  en- 
lightened humanity.  To  this  a  free  nation  should 
especially  pledge  itself.  Freedom  of  the  seas ; 
freedom  of  harbors  ;  an  intercourse  of  nations,  free 
as  the  winds,  —  this  is  not  a  dream  of  philan- 
thropists. We  are  tending  towards  it,  and  let  us 
hasten  it."  Channing' s  prophetic  soul  brooding  on 
things  to  come  was  nowhere  else  so  little  justified 
by  the  event  as  here.  If  his  economics  opened  a 
great  gulf  between  him  and  the  Whiggism,  once 
Federalism,  of  1841,  his  reflections  on  the  French 
Revolution  showed  how  much  he  had  unlearned  of 
the  anti-Gallican  Federalism  of  his  younger  days. 
He  could  now  see  that  the  horrors  of  the  Revolu- 
tion were  effects  of  crimes  more  monstrous  than 


400  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

themselves,  "  a  corruption  of  the  great,  too  deep  to 
be  purged  away  except  by  destruction."  And  he 
thought  the  fable  was  for  us.  He  had  no  fears 
from  popular  excesses.  "  Communities  fall  by  the 
vices  of  the  prosperous  ranks."  And  the  pluto- 
cratic feudalism  to  which  we  are  now  tending  with 
a  vast  and  apparently  irresistible  momentum  af- 
fords a  pregnant  comment  on  his  words. 

Those  who  would  know  what  kind  of  an  expan- 
sionist Channing  was  should  read  this  Philadelphia 
address.  It  is  a  lofty  celebration  of  the  increasing 
universality  of  thought  and  life,  a  plea  for  more 
expansive  sympathies.  The  spirit  of  the  great  ser- 
mon on  the  Church,  which  was  delivered  a  few 
weeks  later  in  the  same  city,  was  the  same  spirit. 
In  the  Church  as  it  had  been,  he  found  "  the  very 
stronghold  of  the  lusts  and  vices  which  Chris- 
tianity most  abhors."  "  The  church  which  opens  on 
heaven  is  that,  and  that  only,  in  which  the  spirit 
of  heaven  dwells."  "  Purity  of  heart  and  life, 
Christ's  spirit  of  love  towards  God  and  man ;  this 
is  all  in  all.  This  is  the  only  essential  thing."  In 
its  main  effect  the  sermon  was  a  clear  vision  of  the 
Church  Universal,  not  as  travestied  by  Rome  or 
Geneva,  but  as  existing  in  the  common  hopes  and 
aspirations  of  all  generous  and  holy  souls. 

There  is  one  grand,  all-comprehending  Church,  and, 
if  I  am  a  Christian,  I  belong  to  it,  and  no  man  can  shut 
me  out  of  it.  You  may  exclude  me  from  your  Roman 
Church,  your  Episcopal  Church,  and  your  Calvinistic 
Church,  on  account  of  supposed  defects  in  my  creed  or 


THE  LAST  STAGE  401 

my  sect,  and  I  am  content  to  be  excluded.  But  I  will 
not  be  severed  from  the  great  body  of  Christ.  Who 
shall  sunder  me  from  such  men  as  F^nelon,  and  Pascal, 
and  Borromeo,  from  Archbishop  Leighton,  Jeremy  Tay- 
lor, and  John  Howard  ?  Who  can  rupture  the  spiritual 
bond  between  these  men  and  myself  ?  Do  I  not  hold 
them  dear  ?  Does  not  their  spirit,  flowing  out  through 
their  writings  and  lives,  penetrate  my  soul  ?  Are  they 
not  a  portion  of  my  being  ?  .  .  .  And  is  it  in  the  power 
of  synod,  or  conclave,  or  of  all  the  ecclesiastical  com- 
binations on  earth,  to  part  me  from  them  ?  .  .  .  A  pure 
mind  is  free  of  the  universe.  It  belongs  to  the  church, 
the  family  of  the  pure,  in  all  worlds.  Virtue  is  no  local 
thing.  It  is  honorable  for  its  own  independent,  everlast- 
ing beauty.  This  is  the  bond  of  the  universal  church. 
No  man  can  be  excommunicated  from  it  but  by  himself, 
by  the  death  of  goodness  in  his  own  breast. 

He  pleaded  for  the  extension  of  preaching  to 
the  characterization  of  great  men,  and  not  merely 
Bible  men.  "  Goodness  owes  nothing  to  the  cir- 
cumstance of  its  being  recorded  in  a  sacred  book, 
nor  loses  its  claim  to  grateful,  reverent  communica- 
tion because  not  blazoned  there."  But  from  every 
excursion  he  came  back  to  his  central  theme.  We 
may  join  particular  churches,  provided  we  do  it 
without  severing  ourselves  in  the  least  from  the 
church  universal.  "  On  this  point  we  cannot  be 
too  earnest.  We  must  shun  the  spirit  of  sectarian- 
ism as  from  hell.  We  must  shudder  at  the  thought 
of  shutting  up  God  in  any  denomination.  We 
must  think  no  man  the  better  for  belonging  to  our 
communion  ;  no  man  the  worse  for  belonging  to  an- 


402  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

other.  "We  must  look  with  undiminished  joy  on 
goodness,  though  it  shine  forth  from  the  most  ad- 
verse sect." 

There  was  earnest  deprecation  of  the  use  of  any 
symbol,  baptism  or  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  a  bond 
of  fellowship.  When  speaking  of  baptism  he  ap- 
proximated the  harshness  of  Theodore  Parker's 
description  of  the  eucharistic  elements  as  "  baker's 
bread  and  grocer's  wine."  He  said,  "  That  the 
Infinite  Father,  who  is  ever  present  to  the  human 
soul,  to  whom  it  is  unspeakably  dear,  who  has 
created  it  for  communion  with  him,  who  desires 
and  delights  to  impart  to  it  his  grace,  that  he 
should  ordain  sea-bathing  as  a  condition  or  means 
of  spiritual  communication,  is  so  improbable  that  I 
must  insist  on  the  strongest  testimony  to  its  truth." 
The  sacramental  theory  of  religion,  which  at  this 
time  was  enjoying  a  revival  in  England,  that  of 
the  Tractarian  Movement,  was  of  all  theories  the 
most  repellent  to  Channing.  There  was  no  place 
for  a  priesthood  in  his  church  universal.  "  The 
surest  device  for  making  the  mind  a  coward  and  a 
slave  is  a  widespread  and  closely  cemented  church, 
the  powers  of  which  are  concentrated  in  the  hands 
of  a  '  sacred  order.' " 

In  the  mean  time  Channing's  formal  connection 
with  the  Federal  Street  Society  had  suffered  grad- 
ual attenuation,  until  at  last  there  was  very  little 
of  it  left.  If,  before  his  entrance  on  his  antislav- 
ery  career,  he  could  groan  in  spirit  that  there  was 
"  no  general  response  "  in  the  society  to  his  senti- 


THE  LAST  STAGE  403 

ments,  "  general  indifference  rather,"  this  feeling 
must  have  been  much  intensified  as  time  went  on, 
and  the  "general  indifference  "  took  on  the  positive 
lines  of  specialized  depreciation  and  distrust.  But 
the  sphere  of  the  preacher's  influence  is  to  so  great 
an  extent  the  sphere  of  silence  that  Channing's 
moral  idealism  had  no  doubt  much  freer  course 
and  much  more  practical  response  among  his  peo- 
ple than  he  dared  believe,  and  the  degree  to  which 
his  antislavery  and  reformatory  spirit  detached 
from  him  their  sympathies  has  probably  been  as 
much  exaggerated  in  some  quarters  as  it  has  been 
obscured  in  others.  Yet  more  than  once  we  find 
him  smarting  under  a  lash  whose  swish  has  a  fa- 
miliar sound.  "  People  bear  patiently  what  it  is 
understood  they  will  not  practice.  But  if  the 
preacher  '  come  down,'  as  it  is  called,  from  these 
heights,  and  assail  in  sober  earnest  deep-rooted 
abuses,  respectable  vices,  inhuman  institutions  or 
arrangements,  and  unjust  means  of  gain,  which 
interest,  pride,  and  habit  have  made  dear  and 
next  to  universal,  the  people  who  exact  from  him 
official  holiness  are  shocked,  offended.  *  He  for- 
gets his  sphere.'  " 

Successive  reductions  of  Dr.  Channing's  salary, 
at  his  own  request,  had,  I  think,  little  or  no  rela- 
tion to  criticisms  of  this  kind,  more  or  less  com- 
mon, but  were  dictated  by  his  actual  and  conscious 
abridgment  of  his  preaching  and  parochial  work. 
As  early  as  1825  he  wished  to  surrender  a  quar- 
ter of  his  salary,  which  at  the  niaximum  was  $2000, 


404  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

but  his  wish  was  overruled.  In  1827  he  speaks 
of  it  as  f  1600,  and  wishes  to  have  it  reduced  to 
11200.  In  1829  a  further  reduction  of  |200  was 
granted  ;  in  1830  another  to  the  same  amount.  In 
1832  he  proposed  to  relinquish  the  remaining  part, 
and  was  prevailed  upon  to  withdraw  his  proposal, 
but  the  next  year  he  insisted  on  a  reduction  to 
1600.  In  1838,  when  Dr.  Gannett's  health  seemed 
to  require  a  colleague  or  assistant.  Dr.  Channing 
again  urged  the  immediate  and  unconditional  abo- 
lition of  his  salary,  but,  Dr.  Gannett's  health  im- 
proving, there  was  no  disturbance  of  the  status 
quo.  In  1840,  however,  he  succeeded  in  having 
his  own  way,  and,  possibly,  the  entire  cessation  of 
his  preaching  in  1841  may  have  borne  some  rela- 
tion to  the  complete  severance  of  the  pecuniary 
bond.  The  correspondence  touching  this  gener- 
ous rivalry  is  printed  in  the  "  Memoir,"  and  it 
abounds  in  expressions  of  mutual  kindness  and 
consideration.  Channing  could  write  in  1840,  "  It 
is,  indeed,  a  gratifying  consideration,  that  our  long 
union  has  not  been  disturbed  by  a  word  of  conten- 
tion." I  have  been  plausibly  assured  that  Chan- 
nins:  received  at  least  one  letter  from  the  clerk  of 
the  society,  critical  of  his  antislavery  course,  that 
was  remarkable  for  its  discourtesy,  but  if  such 
a  letter  was  written,  it  was  strictly  personal,^  — 

1  His  personal  relations  with  the  clerk  of  the  society,  Mr.  George 
S.  Hillard,  were  particularly  friendly  in  1842,  when  his  antislav- 
ery zeal  was  burning  with  its  purest  flame,  Mr.  Hillard  assisting 
him,  with  Charles  Sumner,  in  the  reading  of  his  "  Creole  "  proofs. 


THE  LAST  STAGE  405 

the  records  of  the  society,  which  I  have  carefully 
examined,  preserving  no  sign  of  it.  Those  lament- 
able incidents,  the  refusal  of  the  church  to  him 
for  the  Antislavery  Society  and  for  the  Follen 
Memorial  service,  were,  let  us  trust,  the  most  fla- 
grant instances  of  Channing's  inability  to  enamour 
his  parishioners  with  his  own  conception  of  social 
righteousness.  But  more  and  more  as  he  went  on, 
he  looked  away  from  them,  and  such  as  they,  to 
"  the  less  prosperous  classes  "  for  the  signs  of  a 
new  day.  "  The  prosperous  and  distinguished  of 
this  world,"  he  said,  "  given  as  they  generally  are 
to  epicurean  indulgence  and  vain  show,  are  among 
the  last  to  comprehend  the  worth  of  a  human 
being,  to  penetrate  the  evils  of  society,  or  to  impart 
to  it  a  fresh  impulse." 

The  last  four  years  of  Channing's  life  were  illus- 
trated by  as  many  conspicuous  antislavery  docu- 
ments: three  of  them  published  in  printed  form, 
one,  and  the  last,  by  his  living  voice ;  and  this  was 
printed  some  time  after  its  delivery,  by  some  local 
printer  of  Berkshire  County.  Bare  mention  has 
been  made  abeady  of  these  four  expressions  of  his 
antislavery  mind,  but  they  deserve  fuller  apprecia- 
tion. Henry  Clay's  speech  of  February  7,  1839, 
was  his  bid  for  the  presidency,  then  approaching 
the  conclusion  of  Van  Buren's  term.  "  That  is 
property  which  the  law  declares  to  he  property  "  was 
its  most  piercing  note.  It  defended  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  opposed  antislavery  petitions 
touching  that  matter,  affirmed  the  inviolable  per- 


406  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

manence  of  slavery  in  the  slave  States,  and  de- 
manded immunity  for  it  from  Northern  criticism 
and  rebuke.  Channing,  in  a  letter  to  Jonathan 
Phillips,  took  direct  issue  with  Clay  on  all  these 
grounds.  He  refused  to  believe  that  slavery  was 
a  permanent  institution ;  he  opposed  its  existence 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  defended  the  right 
of  petition  against  that  existence ;  also  the  right 
of  the  North  to  criticise  and  condemn  the  institu- 
tion as  existing  in  the  slave  States.  With  some 
criticism  of  the  Abolitionists,  he  had  much  praise 
for  them,  and  particular  denunciation  for  the  burn- 
ing of  their  Pennsylvania  Hall  and  other  acts  of 
interference  with  their  liberty  of  speech.  As  for 
the  colonizationists,  *'  who  dream  of  removing  slav- 
ery by  the  process  of  draining  it  off  to  another 
country,"  he  called  the  process  *'  about  as  reason- 
able as  draining  the  Atlantic."  It  is,  he  said,  a  doc- 
trine "that  does  only  harm  among  ourselves.  It 
has  confirmed  the  prejudice  to  which  slavery  owes 
much  of  its  strength,  that  the  colored  man  cannot 
live  and  prosper  on  these  shores."  Encouraging 
the  pecuHar  industry  of  the  slave-breeding  States, 
it  had  "  done  much  to  harden  the  slaveholder  in 
his  purpose  of  holding  fast  his  victim,  and  thus 
increased  the  necessity  of  more  earnest  remon- 
strance against  slavery.  .  .  .  What  avails  our 
liberty  of  speech  if,  on  a  grave  question  of  duty, 
we  must  hold  our  peace  ?  "  The  complicity  of  the 
North  was  set  forth  in  unsparing  terms.  "  As  our 
merchants  and  manufacturers  cast  their  eyes  south- 


THE  LAST  STAGE  407 

ward,  what  do  they  see?  Cotton,  cotton,  nothing 
but  cotton.  This  fills  the  whole  southern  horizon. 
What  care  they  for  the  poor  human  tools  by  whom 
it  is  reared  ?  .  .  .  What  change  do  they  desire  in 
a  system  so  gainful?  Men  call  it  in  vague  lan- 
guage an  evil,  just  as  they  call  religion  good ;  in 
both  cases  giving  assent  to  a  lifeless  form  of  words, 
which  they  forget  while  they  utter  them,  and  have 
no  power  over  their  lives." 

Strong  as  the  letter  was,  it  did  not  satisfy  Gar- 
rison. Falstaff's  bread  to  Falstaff's  sack  was  not 
less  than  Channing's  criticism  of  the  Abolitionists 
in  proportion  to  his  condemnation  of  slavery,  but 
to  Garrison's  sensibility  the  proportions  were  re- 
versed. Especially  did  one  ill-considered  sentence 
give  Garrison  his  opportunity :  "  To  me  the  slave- 
holder is  very  much  of  an  abstraction."  It  was 
characteristic  and  unfortunate.  If,  however,  Chan- 
ning  did  not  come  up  to  Garrison's  standard,  his 
antislavery  thinking  was  much  more  radical  than 
that  of  the  political  Republicans  of  1856-60. 
These  made  no  demand  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  the  District,  nor  any  for  the  repeal  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law.  If  Mr.  Blaine  can  be  trusted  on  this 
point,  they  occupied  in  1860  the  ground  of  the 
compromises  of  1850.  But  Channing's  demand 
was  incessant  for  abolition  in  the  District,  for 
the  repeal  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  (which  was 
much  aggravated  in  1850),  and  he  preferred  dis- 
union to  the  annexation  of  Texas  in  the  interest 
of  slavery. 


408  WILLIAM  ELLERI  CHANNING 

While  demurring  at  the  organized  abolitionism 
of  which  Garrison  was  the  head  and  front,  Chan- 
ning  had  more  liking  for  that  than  for  the  politi- 
cal aboHtionism  which  developed  into  the  Liberty 
Party,  with  such  gradual  recession  as  he  antici- 
pated from  the  loftiest  ideals.  He  was  very  much 
impressed  by  the  interest  awakened  in  his  "  Eman- 
cipation," his  antislavery  publication  for  the  year 
1840.  "  The  Abolitionists  have  given  me  a  cor- 
dial welcome,  and  it  delights  me  to  see  how  a  great 
common  object  establishes  in  an  hour  a  confidence 
and  friendship  which  years  are  sometimes  necessary 
to  produce."  He  is  referring  to  his  visit  to  Phila- 
delphia in  1841,  and  he  goes  on,  "  I  cannot  tell 
you  the  hospitalities  which  my  Abolition  labors 
win  for  me,  nor  was  I  aware  of  the  extent  of  their 
influence."  The  "  Emancipation,"  a  pamphlet  of 
eighty-nine  pages,  brought  him  a  precious  letter 
from  Clarkson  with  a  lock  of  his  hair,  —  a  generous 
token  from  one  past  eighty  years  of  age.  The 
pamphlet  was  ostensibly  a  review  of  the  condition 
of  the  West  Indies  at  a  time  when  the  emancipa- 
tion there  had  shown  to  some  extent  what  it  was 
likely  to  effect.  It  was  based  upon  certain  open 
letters  to  Henry  Clay,  written  by  Joseph  John 
Gurney,  an  English  orthodox  Quaker,  with  a  good 
antislavery  record  in  England,  but  in  America, 
like  Kossuth,  Father  Mathew,  and  some  other  per- 
sons of  importance,  careful  in  his  avoidance  of  the 
Garrisonians.  Commending  much  in  Gurney's 
letters,  and  in  their  application  to  American  condi- 


THE   LAST  STAGE  409 

tions,  Channing  denounced  their  emphasis  on  the 
economic  success  of  emancipation  :  "  This  concern 
for  property,  this  unconcern  for  human  nature, 
is  a  sign  of  the  little  progress  made  even  here  by 
free  principles,  and  of  men's  ignorance  of  the 
great  end  of  social  union.  ...  A  better  age  will 
look  with  wonder  and  scorn  on  the  misdirected  in- 
dustry of  the  present  times.  The  only  sure  sign 
of  public  prosperity  is  that  the  mass  of  the  peo- 
ple are  steadily  multiplying  the  comforts  of  life 
and  the  means  of  improvement.  .  .  .  My  maxim 
is,  '  Anything  but  slavery !  Poverty  sooner  than 
slavery.' " 

Touching  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  the 
slave  power,  Channing's  denunciation  of  the  Amer- 
ican churches  was  quite  as  stern  as  James  G. 
Birney's,  which  pilloried  them  as  "  the  bulwark  of 
slavery."  And  slavery  was  not  the  only  evil  power 
that  crooked  the  hinges  of  the  churchmen's  knees 
that  thrift  might  follow  fawning.  "  What  wrong 
or  abuse  is  there  which  the  bulk  of  the  people  may 
think  essential  to  their  prosperity  and  may  defend 
with  outcry  and  menace,  before  which  the  Chris- 
tianity of  this  age  will  not  bow  ?  "  Remarkably 
at  variance  with  some  of  our  more  recent  thinking 
is  Channing's  good  opinion  of  the  negro  race : 
"  The  history  of  West  Indian  emancipation  teaches 
us  that  we  are  holding  in  bondage  one  of  the  best 
races  of  the  human  family."  He  hesitated  to  de- 
cide "  to  which  of  the  races  in  the  Southern  States 
Christianity  was  most  adapted  and  in  which  its 


410  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

noblest  disciples  were  most  likely  to  be  reared." 
In  conclusion  he  renewed  tbe  contention  of  his  re- 
cent letter  to  Jonathan  Phillips  with  regard  to  the 
duties  of  the  Free  States.  He  demanded  an 
amendment  to  the  Constitution  that  would  liber- 
ate the  North  from  its  "  covenant  with  death  and 
agreement  with  heU."  If  he  did  not  use  Garri- 
son's favorite  Scripture,  he  dipped  his  pen  in  no 
rosewater  ink.  And  with  the  pamplilet,  as  a  whole, 
Garrison  was  apparently  well  pleased.  "  Their 
strength,"  said  Channing  of  the  Abolitionists, 
"  has  always  lain  in  the  simplicity  of  their  religious 
trust,  in  their  confidence  in  Christian  truth.  For- 
merly the  hope  sometimes  crossed  my  mind  that, 
by  enlarging  their  views  and  purifying  their  spirit, 
they  would  gradually  become  a  religious  commu- 
nity, founded  on  the  recognition  of  Jesus  Christ  as 
having  lived  and  died  to  unite  to  himself  and  to 
baptize  with  his  spirit  every  human  soul,  and  on 
the  recognition  of  the  brotherhood  of  all  God's 
human  family.  ...  I  thought  I  saw  in  the  prin- 
ciples with  which  the  Abolitionists  started,  a 
struggling  of  the  human  mind  toward  this  Chris- 
tian union."  This  is  the  best  word  that  Channing 
ever  said  for  Garrison,  for  it  was  in  the  Garrisonian 
simplicity  that  he  found  this  promise  ;  it  was  the 
development  of  political  Abolitionism  that  made 
him  fear  for  this  promise  —  that  it  would  not  be 
kept.^ 

^  See,  in   this  connection,   Joseph   Henry  Allen's  "  A   Nine- 
teenth-Century Religion,"  page  197  of  his  Positive  Religion. 


THE  LAST  STAGE  411 

The  same  year  that  found  Channing  busy  with 
his  "  Emancipation,"  was  marked  by  the  most 
painful  and  discouraging  event  of  his  whole  life, 
and  possibly  this  gave  to  the  sword  of  his  spirit  a 
keener  edge  in  the  "  Emancipation  "  book.  In  the 
antislavery  letter  of  1839,  Channing  had  said,  fol- 
lowing a  glowing  tribute  to  Gerrit  Smith  as  a  leader 
of  the  Abolitionists,  "  In  their  ranks  may  also  be 
found  our  common  friend,  that  geniune  man,  that 
heroic  spirit,  whose  love  of  freedom  unites,  in  rare 
harmony,  the  old  Roman  force  with  Christian  love  ; 
in  whom  we  see  the  rash  enthusiasm  of  his  youth 
tempered  into  a  most  sweet  and  winning  virtue.'* 
Follen,  the  object  of  this  praise,  left  New  York 
for  Boston,  January  13,  1840,  on  the  Sound 
steamer  Lexington  ;  and  on  her  way  to  Stoning- 
ton  the  steamer  took  fire,  and,  of  her  164  pas- 
sengers and  crew,  but  four  were  saved.  FoUen 
was  not  likely  to  be  one  of  the  saved,  and  he  was 
not.  The  Massachusetts  Antislavery  Society  re- 
quested the  use  of  the  Federal  Street  church  for  a 
commemoration  service,  at  which  Samuel  J.  May 
was  to  make  the  appropriate  address.  Channing 
heartily  seconded  the  request,  but  it  was  denied  by 
the  church  officers.  It  was  perfectly  well  known 
that  Follen  was  one  of  Channing's  dearest  friends, 
but  great  public  considerations  triumphed  over  the 
personal  appeal.  William  Henry  Channing  says 
in  the  "  Memoir,"  "  This  manifestation  of  a  want 
of  high  sentiment  in  the  congregation,  to  which  for 
so  many  years  he  had  officiated  as  pastor,  made 


412  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Mm  question  the  usefulness  of  his  whole  ministry. 
To  what  end  had  he  poured  out  his  soul,  if  such 
conduct  was  a  practical  embodiment  of  the  prin- 
ciples and  precepts  which  he  had  so  earnestly  in- 
culcated." Channing  could  not,  however,  be  pre- 
vented from  delivering  a  discourse  of  his  own  on 
Follen's  character,  let  who  would  hear  it  or  forbear. 
But  that,  including  the  Follen  sermon,  he  preached 
at  Federal  Street  only  four  times  that  year,  and 
not  once  the  next,  may,  without  violence,  perhaps, 
be  taken  as  a  sign  of  his  instinctive  withdrawal 
from  a  ministry  to  which  such  an  incident  was  pos- 
sible.^ That  ''  great  refusal "  had  gone  nigh  to 
break  his  heart. 

About  this  time,  or  soon  after,  Channing  was 
busy  with  the  preparation  of  a  complete  edition  of 
his  works,  which  was  published  in  1841  in  five 
volumes,  which  included  the  contents  of  the  two 
earlier  volumes.  A  sixth,  containing  the  later  anti- 
slavery  writings,  and  some  others,  was  added  in 
1843.  Had  not  an  impulse  of  personal  kindness 
come  to  the  aid  of  Channing's  too  deliberate  voli- 
tion, this  act  of  self-assertion  would  probably 
have  been  impossible  for  him.  But  he  seemed 
able  to  do  something  for  the  prospects  of  his 
brother  George,  just  then  making  some  publishing 

^  There  is  no  conflict  between  this  surmise  and  that  above, 
touching  the  complete  severance  of  the  pecuniary  bond  between 
Channing  and  the  Federal  Street  church.  This  severance  fol- 
lowed closely  on  the  Follen  incident.  The  post  hoc  was,  perhaps, 
not  a  propter  hoc ;  it  is  more  likely  that  it  was,  at  least  in  some 
degree. 


THE  LAST  STAGE  413 

connection,  by  giving  him  the  copyright  of  the 
edition,  and  this,  accordingly,  he  did;  but  with 
the  understanding  that,  in  a  few  years,  the  books 
should  be  much  reduced  in  price,  and  put  within 
the  reach  of  those  "less  prosperous  people"  to 
whom  Channing  gave  the  first  place  in  his 
thoughts.^ 

The  last  year  of  Channing's  life  was  the  only 
one  marked  by  two  elaborate  additions  to  the  list 
of  his  antislavery  writings.  These  were  the  double 
pamphlet,  "  The  Duty  of  the  Free  States  "  and  the 
Lenox  Address.  The  former  was  inspired  by  the 
case  of  the  Creole,  a  brig  saiHng  from  Hampton 
Roads  to  New  Orleans  with  a  cargo  of  135  slaves 
in  November,  1841.  On  November  7,  the  slaves 
took  possession  of  the  vessel,  killing  their  owner  and 
severely  wounding  the  captain  of  the  brig  and 
others,  officers  and  men.  The  brig  was  taken  into 
the  British  port  of  Nassau,  in  the  island  of  New 
Providence.    Mr.  Webster,  then  Tyler's  Secretary 

1  The  Rev.  Herman  Sno-w,  Harvard  Divinity  School,  1843, 
sends  me  a  manuscript  account  of  his  adventures  with  the 
cheaper  edition,  $2.50  for  the  six  volumes  (originally  $6.00)  in 
1848.  He  travelled  widely  in  New  England  and  penetrated  east- 
ern New  York.  Though  sickness  hampered  him  and  abridged 
his  round,  in  the  course  of  eight  months  he  placed  nearly  five 
thousand  volumes  of  Channing's  writings,  together  with  the  just 
published  Memoir.  The  story  is  a  very  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive one.  Mr.  Snow's  modesty  as  a  book  agent  was  such  as  to 
bring  a  blush  to  the  brazen  cheek  of  the  book  agent  as  developed 
in  these  later  times,  but  his  success  was  not  impaired  by  it.  His 
manuscript  is  to  be  a  permanent  possession  of  the  Divinity  School 
Library.  —  In  1854  the  Association  reported  that  100,000  copies 
of  the  Works  had  been  sold  ! 


414  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

of  State,  demanded  from  England  the  restitution  of 
the  slaves,  but  not,  of  course,  as  slaves,  —  as  muti- 
neers and  murderers.  Hence  Channing's  pamphlet, 
one  of  the  strongest  that  he  ever  wrote.  Charles 
Sumner  was  back  from  his  long  European  journey, 
and  a  great  intimacy  had  sprung  up  between  him 
and  Channing,  who  read  to  him  and  his  son  Wil- 
liam F.  Channing  and  George  S.  Hillard  the  manu- 
script before  its  publication.  We  find  Sumner  and 
Hillard  —  a  strange  conjunction,  in  view  of  their 
divergence  further  on  —  reading  the  proofs  of  the 
pamphlet  after  Dr.  Channing  had  left  Boston  and 
gone  to  Pennsylvania  for  a  bit  of  travel.  In  the 
first  part  of  the  pamphlet  Channing  reviewed 
Webster's  position  with  severe  discrimination.  It 
signified,  he  said,  that  the  United  States  is  bound 
to  extend  the  shield  of  its  protection  over  slavery 
abroad  as  well  as  at  home.  In  the  second  part,  he 
returned  to  the  duty  of  the  Free  States  to  free 
themselves  from  all  complicity  with  slavery,  with- 
drawing from  the  Union  should  Texas  be  annexed. 
September  4,  little  dreaming  that  Channing  had 
not  then  a  month  to  live,  Sumner,  with  the  Creole 
pamphlet  in  his  mind,  wrote  to  his  brother 
George :  — 

Who  excels,  who  equals,  Webster  in  intellect  ?  I  mean 
in  the  mere  dead  weight  of  intellect.  With  the  moral 
elevation  of  Channing,  he  would  become  a  prophet. 
Webster  wants  sympathy  with  the  mass,  —  with  human- 
ity, with  truth.  If  this  had  been  living  within  him.  he 
never  could  have  written   his   Creole  letter.     Without 


THE  LAST  STAGE  415 

Webster's  massive  argumentation,  Channing  sways  the 
world  with  a  stronger  influence.  Thanks  to  God,  who 
has  made  the  hearts  of  men  to  respond  to  what  is  ele- 
vated, noble,  true  !     Whose  position  would  you  prefer, 

—  that  of  Webster  or  Channing  ?  I  know  the  latter 
intimately ;  and  my  admiration  for  him  grows  con- 
stantly. When  I  was  younger  than  I  am  now,  I  was 
presumptuous  enough  to  question  his  power.  ...  I  am 
glad  that  I  am  wise  enough  to  see  him  in  a  different 
light.  His  moral  nature  is  powerful,  and  he  writes 
under  the  strong  instincts  which  this  supplies ;  and  the 
appeal  is  felt  by  the  world. 

On  his  sixty-second  birthday,  as  already  noted, 
Channing  preached  for  the  last  time  in  the  Fed- 
eral Street  church.  The  text  was  from  2  Cor. 
iv.  18,  and  the  subject  was  his  "  one  sublime  idea 

—  the  greatness  of  the  soul,"  the  subject  of  all  his 
preaching  to  an  unparalleled  degree.  He  had  long 
been  desiring  to  visit  the  interior  of  Pennsylvania, 
especially  the  banks  of  the  Juniata  and  the  valley 
of  Wyoming.  He  started  prematurely,  found  the 
roads  impassable,  was  obliged  to  take  to  the  canal 
boats  for  night  travel,  broke  down,  and  for  nearly 
a  month  was  a  prisoner  at  a  hotel  in  Wilkesbarre. 
The  beauty  of  the  Susquehanna  made  his  con- 
valescence a  sufficient  compensation  and  delight. 
Writing  of  this  to  Harriet  Martineau,  he  turns 
from  it  to  the  circulation  of  his  books  among  the 
laboring  classes,  and  says,  "  To  me  this  is  fame'^ 
"  A  thousand  times  better  than  fame  !  "  he  had 
once  said  of  a  workingman's  letter.  Early  in  July 
he  reached  Lenox,  and  remained  there  two  months, 


416  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

making  excursions  to  Stockbridge  and  the  Bashpish 
Falls.  Established  at  the  Lenox  inn,  he  was  in 
constant  communication  with  the  Sedgwicks,  peo- 
ple of  fine  intelligence  and  culture  and  pronounced 
ideality.  He  was  never  happier,  nor  diffused  more 
happiness.  The  Sedgwicks  did  not  find  the  man 
and  friend  obscured  by  the  prophet  and  the  saint. 
The  unconventional  atmosphere  exactly  suited  him. 
Asked  what  period  of  life  he  thought  happiest,  he 
answered,  "  About  sixty."  "  Our  cup  of  outward 
good,"  he  wrote,  "seems  overflowing,  and  I  re- 
ceive it  thankfully,  not  forgetting  how  soon  it  may 
pass  from  us."  He  enjoyed  the  wildness  of  the 
Berkshire  Hills,  but  also  the  agricultural  softening 
of  the  valleys,  time  wearing  out  the  wi'inkles  of  the 
ancient  mother,  so  that  she  was  growing  younger 
all  the  time.  Some  personal  notes  must  here  be 
reproduced.  "  I  have  kept  up  by  books  my  ac- 
quaintance with  all  classes  ;  but  real  life  is  the 
best  book.  At  the  end  of  life,  I  see  that  I  have 
lived  too  much  by  myself.  I  wish  you  more  cour- 
age, cordiality,  and  real  union  with  your  race.  .  .  . 
I  sometimes  feel  as  if  I  had  never  known  anything 
of  human  nature  until  lately,  —  but  so  it  will  be 
forever.  .  .  .  My  reserve  is  not  to  be  broken  down 
in  these  latter  years  of  my  life,  but  I  think  the  ice 
melts.  ...  I  should  incline  much,  if  I  were  in 
better  health,  to  break  every  chain,  and  harden 
myself  for  a  life  of  wider  experience  and  more 
earnest  struggle."  Curiosity  mingled  with  his  de- 
light in  natural  things.     He  wrote,  "  Amidst  such 


THE  LAST  STAGE  417 

Elysian  beauty,  the  chains  which  the  spirit  wears 
are  broken,  and  it  goes  forth  to  blend  with  and  en- 
joy the  universe  ; ' '  and  also  wondering  "  whether 
light  may  not  be  a  more  important  physical  agent 
than  it  has  been  considered,  —  whether  the  various 
rays  may  not  prevail  in  different  proportions  at 
different  times,  and  whether  the  preponderance  of 
one  —  say  the  red  or  violet  —  may  not  exert  unsus- 
pected influence  on  vegetable  and  animal  nature." 
There  surely  he  was  on  the  track  of  secrets  that 
Tyndall  and  Helmholtz  and  other  eager  huntsmen 
have  run  down. 

And  so,  always  learning,  ever  more  hopeful, 
simple,  brave,  he  came  to  August  1,  1842,  and  to 
the  last  public  utterance  of  his  life.  He  spoke 
uninvited,  finding  the  Berkshire  people  forgetful  of 
the  slave,  and  resolved  to  stir  up  their  pure  minds. 
The  mountains,  sacred  to  liberty,  were  his  inspira- 
tion. There  could  not  be  a  lovelier  spot  than  that 
where  stands  the  meeting-house  in  which  he  spoke. 
Fanny  Kemble  was  of  this  opinion,  and  wished  to 
be  buried  in  the  churchyard,  where  the  dead  neigh- 
bor the  living  congregation  as  with  conscious  joy. 
One  perfect  day  I  went  on  pilgrimage  to  this  sacred 
place,  walking  more  than  thirty  miles  across  coun- 
try, and  coming  to  my  goal  just  as  the  shadows  of 
the  hills  were  lengthening  down  the  valley  and  the 
night  was  setting  in.  I  have  never  felt  so  near  to 
Channing  as  I  did  then  and  there.  The  first  of 
August  proved  to  be  one  of  the  finest  days  imagi- 
nable.    The  clear  air  helped,  but  the  speaker  had 


418  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

not  strength  to  read  all  that  he  had  written.  Nev- 
ertheless, he  spoke  for  an  hour  and  a  quarter,  and 
he  ended  with  the  apostrophe,  the  prayer,  that  many 
of  us  know  so  well,  — 

O  come,  thou  kingdom  of  heaven,  for  which  we  daily 
pray !  Come,  Friend  and  Saviour  of  the  race,  who 
didst  shed  thy  blood  on  the  cross  to  reconcile  man  to 
man  and  earth  to  heaven  !  Come,  Father  Almighty,  and 
crown  with  thine  omnipotence  the  humble  strivings  of 
thy  children  to  subvert  oppression  and  wrong,  to  spread 
light  and  freedom  and  peace  and  joy,  the  truth  and 
spirit  of  thy  Son,  through  the  whole  earth  ! 

The  words  could  not  have  been  more  of  the 
essence  of  his  life  if  they  had  been  deliberately 
chosen  as  his  last.  The  day  was  the  eighth  anni- 
versary of  the  beginning  of  the  West  Indian  Eman- 
cipation, the  fourth  anniversary  of  the  rounded 
completion  of  that  great  event.  It  was  Chan- 
ning's  purpose  to  hold  up  that  act  of  sovereign 
justice  as  an  object  lesson  to  his  countrymen. 
And  this  he  did  with  a  persuasiveness  that  must 
have  won  the  most  reluctant  minds.  All  of  his 
other  great  antislavery  utterances  had  been  printed, 
not  spoken.  If  this  had  less  than  the  best  of  those 
of  solid  argument,  it  had  more  than  any  of  them 
of  emotional  ardor,  of  complete  abandonment  to 
the  spirit  of  the  solemn  theme.  He  had  never 
spoken  to  his  fellow  men  more  powerfully  than  in 
this  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  for  his  public 
work  we  could  not  imagine  or  desire  a  better  end. 

The  address  taxed  Channing's  strength  so  much 


THE  LAST  STAGE  419 

that  for  some  days  after  it  lie  was  a  broken  wave, 
but,  rallying  once  more,  the  remaining  weeks  of 
August  proved  full  of  peace  and  pleasantness,  and 
early  in  September  he  set  out  for  home,  taking  the 
longest  way  round,  through  the  Green  Mountains. 
1  have  walked  much  of  that  country  through,  and 
know  how  beautiful  are  the  scenes  that  greeted 
him  and  his  companions  as  they  drove  along,  Grey- 
lock  besetting  them  before,  and  then  behind,  like 
a  great  mountain  god.  But  the  Berkshire  air  had 
brought  him  poison  on  its  wings,  and,  arrived  at 
Bennington,  he  found  that  he  could  not  go  on.  The 
trouble  was  a  typhoid  fever,  and  the  wonder  is 
that  one  so  frail  held  out  so  long  against  it  —  for 
twenty-six  days,  during  which  hope  and  fear  alter- 
nated in  their  hearts  who  watched  beside  his  bed. 
The  Walloomsac  inn,  where  he  was  lying,  was  for- 
tunately a  pleasant  one.  From  its  eastern  front 
one  looked  across  the  village  green  and  the  East 
Bennington  valley  to  the  Green  Mountain  wall. 
Perhaps  some  other  genius  of  the  place  than  John 
Stark,  whose  monument  is  near  the  inn,  would 
have  been  more  congenial  to  Channing.  Probably 
he  did  not  know  that  next  door  but  one  was  the 
office  of  the  "  Journal  of  the  Times,"  where  Gar- 
rison did  good  editorial  work  and  Lundy  foimd 
him  out.  His  consideration  for  others  never  failed. 
His  gratitude  for  every  service  rendered  him  put 
others  in  his  debt.  To  Mr.  Hicks,  his  landlord, 
and  to  the  housemaid,  he  was  as  courteous  as  if 
they  had  been  king  and  queen.    His  presence  made 


420  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

a  stillness  round  about,  even  a  company  of  soldiers 
on  the  green,  and  at  tlie  inn  table,  hushing  their 
customary  noise. 

His  mind  did  not  wander,  but  was  excited  over- 
much. He  begged  his  friends  to  talk  of  conunon 
things,  and  charm  away  "  these  crowds  of  images, 
these  visions  of  immensity,  and  rushing  thoughts." 
He  had  many  that  were  calm  and  sweet.  "  We 
must  beware,"  he  said,  "  of  overexcited  feeling,  of 
vague  sentiment,  of  mingling  our  theoretical  views 
or  our  favorite  imaginations  with  the  truth.  We 
need  to  feel  the  reality ^^  —  this  with  great  earnest- 
ness, —  ••'  the  REALITY  of  the  spiritual  life."  No- 
thing pleased  him  more  than  to  hear  of  the  quiet 
courage  of  certain  people  who  had  made  great  sac- 
rifices in  the  antislavery  cause.  Often  he  seemed 
praying  in  his  sleep,  his  lips  murmuring,  "  Heav- 
enly Father !  "  Sleeping  a  little  after  a  restless 
night,  he  said,  "  I  do  not  know  that  my  heart  was 
ever  so  overflowed  by  a  grateful  sense  of  the  good- 
ness of  God."  Thursday  night,  September  29, 
was  wholly  sleepless,  but  he  had  great  enjoyment 
of  his  thoughts.  The  next  night,  when  Webster 
was  swaying  a  great  multitude  in  Faneuil  Hall, 
defending  liis  retention  of  his  place  in  Tyler's  cabi- 
net, Channing,  ignorant  of  all  that,  felt  that  his  end 
was  near.  He  wished  he  might  get  home  "  to  die  ;  " 
then  added  quickly,  "  But  it  wiU  aU  be  well ;  it  is 
all  well."  Sunday,  October  2,  he  wished  all  his 
friends  to  go  to  church,  but  permitted  them  to  stay 
with  him,  and  asked  one  of  them  to  read  from 


THE  LAST  STAGE  421 

the  New  Testament  —  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
At  the  end  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  he  said,  "  That 
will  do  now,"  and  that  Scripture  reading  was  the 
last.  His  voice  sank,  but  his  last  audible  words 
had  still  the  pattern  of  his  soul.  They  were,  "  I 
have  received  many  messages  from  the  spirit." 

They  turned  him  in  his  bed  that  he  might  look 
upon  the  eastern  hills,  on  which,  and  on  the  sky 
above  them,  the  reflected  sunset  light  was  warm 
and  beautiful.  Through  the  parted  curtains  and  a 
clambering  vine,  it  stole  in  upon  his  face.  None 
knew  just  when  he  passed,  but  he  died  looking 
eastward,  as  if  expectant  of  another  dawn. 

The  body  was  taken  to  Boston,  and  the  echoes 
of  Webster's  great  defiant  speech  were  quenched 
by  the  deep  toll  of  Channing's  funeral  bells,  those 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  cathedral  with  the  rest,  for 
it  was  remembered  that,  when  the  good  Bishop 
Cheverus  died,  Channing  had  done  him  honor  above 
all.  He  lay  before  the  pulpit  from  which  he  had 
delivered  his  great  message,  his  face  but  little 
paler  than  in  life,  the  brown  hair  straying  in  the 
remembered  way  across  the  marble  brow.  Dr.  Gan- 
nett's  sermon  was  a  cordial  tribute,  perfectly  simple 
and  sincere ;  but  few  of  those  who  heard  it  under- 
stood what  a  great  man  was  dead. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

AS   DYING   AND   BEHOLD ! 

There  was  no  lack  of  the  proverbial  readiness 
to  build  the  prophet's  sepulchre  and  decorate  it 
with  unstinting  hand.  We  have  no  means  of 
knowing  how  many  sermons  in  praise  of  Channing 
were  occasioned  by  his  death.  Of  those  published, 
Dr.  Gannett  bound  up  a  collection  in  a  big  volume 
which  lies  here  on  my  desk.  It  is  fuller  than  an- 
other collection  entrusted  to  my  care,  and  if  not 
complete,  is,  I  imagine,  nearly  so.^    Either  collection 

1  The  Americau  sermons  are  by  E.  S.  Gannett,  Funeral  Ad- 
dress, October  7,  1842;  E.  S.  Gannett,  Sermon  in  Federal  Street 
church,  October  9 ;  George  E.  Ellis ;  Theodore  Parker ;  Edward 
B.  Hall ;  Heniy  W.  Bellows  ;  Frederic  H.  Hedge  ;  Orville  Dewey ; 
James  Freeman  Clarke  ;  Henry  Bacon  (Universalist)  ;  John  Pier- 
pont ;  Cyrus  A.  Bartol ;  Charles  T.  Brooks ;  James  H.  Perkins. 
The  last  two  are  in  newspaper  form,  the  others  in  pamphlet. 
Dewey's  sermon,  from  which  I  have  quoted  freely,  was  the  most 
elaborate  and  the  fullest  in  its  reminiscences  of  personal  traits. 
Hedge's  critical  instinct  did  not  forsake  him,  and  he  said,  "His 
was  not  what  one  would  call  an  original  mind.  .  .  .  He  did  not 
see  further  than  other  men,  but  he  saw  more  distinctly,  with  a 
more  careful  discrimination,  and  a  more  intense  appreciation  of 
the  object.  .  .  .  Originality  was  not  his  gift,  but  effective  utter- 
ance was."  In  the  English  collection  there  are  thirteen  sermons, 
with  important  extracts  from  others,  by  J.  J.  Tayler  and  James 
Martineau.  Such  well-known  Unitarian  names  as  Hutton,  Madge, 
Armstrong,  Tagart,  Gordon,  Drummond,  and  Carpenter  appear ; 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD  !  423 

makes  it  plain  that  Channing's  reputation  was  quite 
as  distinguished  in  the  mother  country  as  in  this. 
Dr.  Ellis,  in  his  sermon,  anticipated  a  fuller  recog- 
nition of  Channing's  antislavery  and  reformatory 
zeal  in  England  than  in  America,  and  his  anticipa- 
tion was  made  good  in  the  event :  naturally,  for  it 
is  always  easier  to  recognize  and  applaud  the  re- 
former at  long  range  than  close  at  hand.  Here, 
some  of  the  eulogists  slurred  Channing's  reforma- 
tory spirit  as  of  little  consequence.  Others,  who 
could  not  do  this,  damned  it  with  faint  or  ill-pro- 
portioned praise,  some  using  Channing's  antislav- 
ery temper  as  a  background  against  which  to  bring 
out  that  of  the  AboHtionists  in  harsh  relief.  But 
Theodore  Parker,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  and  John 
Pierpont  gave  due  prominence  to  that  part  of  Chan- 
ning's work  which  meant  most  to  him  in  his  ma- 
turest  years. 

The  poets  brought  their  pebbles  to  his  cairn. 
Bryant,  an  earnest  Unitarian,  did  not,  except  pos- 
sibly a  hymn  sung  at  the  memorial  service  in  New 
York,  nor  Emerson ;  nor  Holmes,  whose  Unitarian 
consciousness  intensified  as  his  moral  earnestness 
increased.  Longfellow's  tribute,  though  written 
after  Channing's  death,  was  written  without  know- 
several  of  which  are  worn  in  our  own  generation  hy  those  whom 
we  delight  to  honor.  The  most  notable  of  the  English  sermons 
is  Mr.  Aspland's,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  supplemented  with 
a  series  of  well-chosen  extracts  from  Channing's  writings,  with 
notes  explanatory  and  critical,  one  of  these  quoting  extensively 
from  Harriet  Martineau's  strictures  on  Channing's  depreciation  of 
Priestley. 


424  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING - 

ledge  of  that  event,  on  the  Atlantic,  as  a  prelude 
to  his  "  Antislavery  Poems."  "  WeU  done  !  "  he 
sang,  — 

Well  done !  thy  words  are  great  and  bold ; 

At  times  they  seem  to  me 
Like  Luther's,  in  the  days  of  old, 

Half-battles  for  the  free. 

Go  on,  until  this  land  revokes 

The  old  and  chartered  Lie, 
The  feudal  curse  whose  whips  and  yokes 

Insult  humanity. 

Lowell's  contribution  was  a  very  noble  "  Elegy  on 
the  death  of  Dr.  Channing,"  its  crowning  stanza 
bright  with  a  prophecy  that  still  awaits  its  hour,  — 

From  off  the  starry  mountain  peaks  of  song, 
Thy  spirit  shows  me,  in  the  coming-  time, 

An  earth  unwithered  by  the  foot  of  wrong, 
A  race  revering  its  own  soul  sublime. 

But  all  these  were  to  the  Unitarian  manner  born 
and  bred.  The  fitness  of  things  required  that  the 
most  admirable  poetical  appreciation  should  come 
from  Whittier,  a  Quaker  poet,  and  yet  the  one  of 
all  our  major  choir  who  has  embodied  the  most  of 
Channing's  humane  and  liberal  spirit  in  his  vari- 
ous song.  One  stanza  took  its  color  from  the 
Lenox  Address :  — 

How  echoes  yet  each  western  hill 

And  vale  with  Channing's  dying  word ! 

How  are  the  hearts  of  freemen  still 
By  that  great  warning  stirred ! 

Another  stanza  touched  that  reward  of  Channing's 
work  which  was  the  most  to  him  of  all :  — 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  425 

Swart  smiters  of  the  glowing'  steel, 
Dark  feeders  of  the  forge's  flame, 

Pale  watchers  at  the  loom  and  wheel, 
Repeat  his  honored  name. 

The  publication  of  the  "  Memoir  "  in  1848  was 
a  happy  circumstance  for  Channing's  memory  and 
fame.  The  best  that  I  can  hope  for  this  book  of 
mine  is  that  it  will  send  many  to  that  fountain- 
head.  It  would  be  quite  impossible  for  me  to 
exaggerate  my  sense  of  its  sufficiency,  though  some 
details  of  its  arrangement  are  almost  as  bad  as 
possible.!  Precious  as  Channing's  collected  writ- 
ings are,  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  the  "  Memoir  " 
is  even  more  precious.  I  have  never  tired  of 
commending  it  to  my  younger  fellow  ministers  as 
an  indispensable  aid  to  intellectual  freedom  and  to 
spiritual  growth.  The  nephew's  appreciation  of 
the  uncle  leaves  nothing  to  desire,  but  it  is  the 
mass  of  Channing's  self-expression  that  constitutes 
the  value  of  the  "  Memoir  "  to  a  preeminent  de- 
gree. It  is  a  painful  thought  that  this  mass,  which 
has  been  my  envy  and  despair,  has  had  a  deterrent 
influence  on  many  readers.  Great  has  been  their 
reward  who  have  not  halted  on  the  threshold,  but, 
entering  the  house,  have  penetrated  every  room, 
enjoyed  each  wide  outlook,  and  bowed  themselves 
at  every  secret  shrine. 

^  The  lack  of  an  index  to  the  original  three  volumes  made  con- 
fusion worse  confounded,  but  this  defect  has  been  remedied  to 
admiration  in  the  one-volume  "  Centenary  Edition  "  of  the  Unita- 
rian Association.  This,  with  the  one-volume  (indexed)  edition  of 
Channing's  works,  published  by  the  Association  in  1875,  has  had 
wide  circulation.  The  Works  can  be  had  for  the  asking  by  set- 
tled ministers  of  any  denomination. 


426  WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING 

Stuart  of  Andover  was  not  the  only  antagonist 
of  Channing  wlio  in  this  revelation  of  his  deeper 
mind  found  unexpected  veins  of  spiritual  and  moral 
gold.  But  from  all  the  more  elaborate  reviews  of 
the  "  Memoir  "  two  stand  out  with  special  promi- 
nence,—  Garrison's  and  Martineau's.  Garrison's 
appeared  in  "  The  Liberator,"  xviii.  82,  and  is  re- 
produced in  the  "  Story  "  of  Garrison's  life  told 
by  his  sons,  iii.  239-242.  Not  every  particidar 
will  satisfy  Channing' s  most  or  least  intelligent 
admirers,  but,  all  things  considered,  there  are  few 
testimonies  to  his  moral  worth  that  deserve  more 
careful  attention.  At  the  risk  of  doing  Garrison 
injustice,  I  take  a  few  sentences  where  I  should 
like  to  take  the  whole :  — 

My  impressions  of  Dr.  Channing  were  that  he  was 
somewhat  cold  in  temperament,  timid  in  spirit,  and 
oracular  in  feeling.  But  these  have  been  greatly,  if  not 
entirely,  removed  by  a  perusal  of  this  memoir.  I  see 
him  now  in  a  new  phase  —  in  a  better  light.  He  cer- 
tainly had  no  ardor  of  soul,  but  a  mild  and  steady 
warmth  of  character  appears  to  have  been  natural  to 
him.  I  do  not  now  think  that  he  was  timid  in  a  con- 
demnatory sense;  but  his  circumspection  was  almost 
excessive,  his  veneration  large,  and  distrust  of  himself, 
rather  than  a  fear  of  others,  led  him  to  appear  to  shrink 
from  an  uncompromising  application  of  the  principles 
he  cherished.  In  the  theological  arena  he  exhibited 
more  courage  than  elsewhere ;  yet,  even  there,  he  was 
far  from  being  boldly  aggressive,  for  controversy  was 
not  to  his  taste.  In  striving  to  be  catholic  and  mag- 
nanimous, he  was  led  to  apologize  for  those  who  de- 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  427 

served  severe  condemnation.  He  was  ever  reluctant  to 
believe  that  men  sin  wilfully,  and,  therefore,  preferred 
to  attack  sin  in  the  abstract  than  to  deal  with  it  person- 
ally. ...  In  a  pioneering  sense,  Dr.  Channing  was  not 
a  reformer ;  sympathetically,  and  through  a  conscien- 
tious conviction,  he  was.  ...  It  is  equally  interesting 
and  cheering  to  perceive  his  growing  interest  in  reform 
and  reformers.  His  voice  of  rebuke  to  a  guilty  nation 
was  growing  stronger,  and  his  "  all-hail "  to  the  true- 
hearted  more  emphatic  continually.  .  .  .  His  preemi- 
nence was  not  intellectual  —  for  he  had  not  an  extraor- 
dinary intellect  —  but  moral,  religious,  humane,  in  the 
largest  and  best  use  of  those  terms.  He  was  utterly 
divorced  from  bigotry  and  sectarism.  He  believed  in 
eternal  progress,  and  therefore  never  stood  still,  but 
went  onward  —  if  not  rapidly,  without  faltering.  He 
changed  his  views  and  positions  from  time  to  time,  but 
only  to  advance,  never  to  retreat.  Theologically  he  is 
to  be  regarded  as  a  prodigy  on  the  score  of  independent 
investigation  and  free  utterance.  In  this  field,  his 
labors  cannot  be  overestimated. 

Generous  allowance  is  made  for  the  fact  that  he 
was  a  clergyman,  "  an  office  which  it  is  scarcely 
possible  for  any  man  to  fill  without  loss  of  inde- 
pendence," that  he  moved  in  a  wealthy  and  aristo- 
cratic circle,  '^  the  last  to  sympathize  with  outcast 
humanity,"  and  that  he  was  allied  with  the  Unita- 
rians, who  were  "  deeply  afflicted  and  mortified 
with  his  Abolition  tendencies."  Then  comes  the 
pathetic  personal  note  :  — 

Much  to  my  regret,  I  had  no  personal  acquaintance 
with  this  remarkable  man,  though  I  longed  for  at  least 
a  single  interview.     As  he  never  expressed  a  wish  to 


428  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

converse  with  me,  I  did  not  feel  free  to  intrude  myself 
upon  his  notice.  For  twelve  years  he  saw  me  struggling 
against  all  that  was  evil  in  the  land, —  in  a  cause  worthy 
of  universal  acclaim,  —  with  fidelity  and  an  unfaltering 
spirit,  but  during  all  that  time  he  never  conveyed  to 
me,  directly  or  indirectly,  a  word  of  cheer  or  a  whisper 
of  encouragement.  Consequently,  we  never  met  for  an 
interchange  of  sentiments.  Had  we  done  so,  though 
there  is  no  probability  that  we  should  have  seen  eye  to 
eye  in  all  things,  we  might  have  been  mutually  bene- 
fited. I  am  sure  that  he  misjudged  my  spirit,  as  well 
as  misapprehended  the  philosophy  of  the  antislavery 
reform ;  and  I  now  think  that  I  did  not  fully  appre- 
ciate the  difficulties  of  his  situation  or  the  peculiarities 
of  his  mind. 

Martineau's  review  of  the  "  Memoir  "  appeared 
in  the  "Westminster  Review"  of  January,  1849, 
and  it  is  reproduced  in  the  first  volume  of  his 
"  Essays,  Reviews,  and  Addresses."  The  article 
abounds  in  admirable  judgments  upon  special 
aspects  of  Channing's  thought  and  life.  There  is 
wonder  that  such  speculations  as  those  of  Hume 
and  Berkeley  should  have  overpassed  him  like  a 
summer  cloud,  vdthout  his  special  wonder.  "  The 
truth  is,"  he  says,  "  that  the  intensity  of  the  moral 
sentiment  within  him  absorbed  everything  into 
itseK ;  made  his  reflective  activity  wholly  predomi- 
nant over  the  apprehensive,  and  determined  it  in 
one  invariable  direction.  He  meditated,  where 
others  would  have  learned ;  and  the  materials  of 
his  knowledge  disappeared  as  fast  as  they  were 
given,  in  the  larger  generalizations  of  his  faith. 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  429 

His  mind  thus  grew,  while  his  attaioments  made 
no  show,  and,  while  he  missed  the  praise  of  learn- 
ing, he  won  an  affluence  of  wisdom."  The  key- 
note of  the  whole  of  Dr.  Channing's  character  is 
found  in  "  his  sense  of  the  inherent  greatness  of 
man,"  which  "  remained  the  immovable  centre  of 
his  reverence  and  trust.  It  was,  in  fact,  his  natural 
creed.  A  mind  distinguished  for  purity  and  quick- 
ness of  moral  apprehension  cannot  but  believe  at 
least  in  the  occasional  realities  of  the  excellence 
and  beauty  it  discerns ;  and  this  will  rise  into  the 
belief  in  their  universal  possibility,  if  there  be 
also  remarkable  strength  of  will  and  habitual  self- 
conquest.  It  is  difficult  for  genius,  it  is  impossible 
for  goodness,  to  suppose  others  incapable  of  seeing 
its  visions,  and  outstripping  its  achievements." 
Martineau  finds  "  Channing's  love  of  indeterminate 
and  widely  suggestive  language  an  inseparable  part 
of  his  religion  "  and  a  sign  of  his  fundamental  dif- 
ference from  the  schools  of  Calvin  and  Priestley, 
with  their  fondness  for  a  highly  elaborated  and 
closely  connected  system.  At  this  point,  Martineau 
speaks  with  much  earnestness  and  a  strong  personal 
inflection,  for  no  one  else  did  so  much  as  Channing 
to  free  him  from  Priestley's  necessarian  and  mate- 
rialistic bonds.  The  introduction  to  Channing's 
collected  works  might  well  have  been  the  inspira- 
tion of  Martineau' s  subsequent  prolonged  endeavor 
to  save  human  freedom  from  submergence  in  mat- 
ter or  in  God,  and  God  and  matter  from  submerg- 
ence in  an  idealism  which  allows  reality  to  nothing 


430  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

but  the  ideas  of  the  human  mind.  Martineau's 
comparison  of  Channing  and  Priestley  is  done  in 
his  most  characteristic  manner.  He  finds  them 
representing  "  views  of  religion  as  fundamentally 
opposed  as  any  which  can  arise  within  the  limits 
of  a  common  Theism."  ^  "  Neither  of  them  suc- 
ceeds in  reconciling  with  each  other  the  deductions 
separately  drawn  from  the  objective  and  subjective 
point  of  view,  and  bridging  over  the  chasm  between 
the  Causal  and  the  Moral  God."  He  finds  Chan- 
ning less  coherent  and  complete  than  Priestley, 
but  Priestley's  coherency  and  completeness  at  the 
expense  of  a  responsible  morality.  But  Marti- 
neau's  idea  that  Channing  looked  on  Calvin  with 
"  milder  antipathy  "  than  on  Priestley,  is  not  justi- 
fied by  the  habitual  stress  of  Channing's  utterance. 
Systems  of  theology  did  not  present  themselves  to 
him  as  they  did  to  Martineau,  panoplied  in  the 
completeness  of  their  philosophical  impHcations. 
What  was  most  obvious  impressed  liim  most ;  and 
Calvin's  God  and  man,  both  totally  depraved,  ex- 
cited in  him  a  much  more  positive  antipathy  than 
Priestley's  materialistic  psychology  and  necessarian 
ethics,  obscured  by  their  obvious  appearance  of 

^  Was  theirs  "  a  common  Theism  "  ?  Priestley  was  a  Christian 
Deist ;  and  Channing,  if  not  a  Christian  Theist,  approximated 
that  standing.  He  kept  up  some  formal  connection  with  the 
Paley-ontologists,  but  essentially  was  less  implicated  in  their 
*'  natural  theology  "  than  was  Theodore  Parker.  If  he  went  to 
Nature,  she  always  sent  him  back  to  his  own  soul.  The  heavens 
declared  to  him  the  glory  of  God,  mainly  because  they  declared 
to  him  the  glory  of  Newton  and  Laplace. 


AS   DYING  AND  BEHOLD  !  431 

infinite  goodness  in  God  and  natural  capacity  for 
goodness  in  mankiad. 

The  year  1848  was  a  year  of  such  political  activ- 
ity that  the  Channing  "  Memoir  "  must  have  been 
quite  overlooked,  had  it  not  contained  so  much 
that  was  pertinent  to  the  political  situation.  But 
Lowell's  "  Biglow  Papers,"  published  the  same 
year,  might  well  have  drawn  from  it  their  vital 
juices,  their  passionate  reprobation  of  both  war 
and  slavery.  In  1850  came  the  compromises  of 
Clay,  and  found  Webster  sharing  with  Douglas  the 
brunt  of  their  support.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  with 
what  noble  indignation  Channing  would  have  repu- 
diated them,  and  with  what  ignoble  indignation  the 
respectability  of  Boston  would  have  repudiated 
him  for  his  offence ;  with  what  mental  agony  he 
would  have  seen  Sims  and  Burns  sent  back  into 
slavery  by  a  Boston  court,  the  court-house  hung 
in  chains;  and  how  sincerely  he  would  have  re- 
joiced in  those  signs  of  awakening  conscience  in 
the  city  of  his  loving  hope  when  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise was  broken  down  and,  four  years  later, 
the  Dred  Scott  decision  made  the  slave-owner  wel- 
come to  take  his  property  with  him  wherever  he 
might  choose  to  go.  Doubtless,  the  great  war 
would  have  put  upon  Channing' s  peace  principles 
a  severe  strain,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  he 
had  said,  clenching  his  tiny  fist,  "  There  are  times 
when  we  must  fight,"  and  would  he  not  have  con- 
ceived that  one  of  these  had  come  at  length  ?  If 
not,  he  would  still  have  cried  with  Garrison,  whose 


432  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

peace  principles  were  more  absolute,  "  God  help 
the  righteous  side !  "  He  would  have  rejoiced  in 
every  Northern  victory,  most  of  all  in  those  of 
September  22,  1862,  and  January  1,  1863,  —  the 
emancipation  proclamations  of  those  dates.  The 
war  over,  he  would  have  hesitated  at  "manhood 
suffrage  "  as  an  immediate  gift  to  the  late  slaves, 
while  looking  steadily  to  it  as  an  ideal  end.  Only 
with  sorrowful  deprecation  could  he  have  seen  them 
flung  into  the  pohtical  arena,  and  there,  dazed  by 
the  light  of  their  new  freedom,  made  the  sport 
of  those  who  goaded  them  to  wild  excess.  But 
what  we  hardly  can  imagine  is  the  piteous  shame 
with  which  he  would  have  regarded  the  race  preju- 
dice and  hatred  which  have  trailed  the  land  with 
blood  and  fire,  while  the  political  partizans,  having 
no  further  use  for  the  negro,  have  looked  on  com- 
placently. On  the  other  hand,  he  would  have, 
could  he  revisit  us,  the  encouragement  of  such 
noble  and  effective  work  as  that  done  at  Hampton 
and  Tuskegee,  and  other  similar  places  in  the 
South. 

It  is  a  conviction  not  to  be  escaped  that  along 
the  line  of  this  development,  and  especially  tlu-ough- 
out  the  antislavery  debate,  the  influence  of  Chan- 
ning  was  a  potent  one  for  the  purification  of 
political  ideals  and  for  the  breaking  of  every  yoke 
that  pressed  a  human  being  down.  As  Spenser 
is  the  poets'  poet,  so  Channing  was  the  reformers' 
reformer.  His  writings  and  the  tradition  of  his 
character  were  unfailing  springs  of  social  aspira- 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  433 

tion.  If,  since  Channing  died,  philanthropy  has 
had  freer  expansion  in  Boston  than  in  any  other 
city,  if  there  the  treatment  of  the  poor,  the  blind, 
the  insane,  the  criminal,  has  excited  the  most  care- 
ful thought  and  attracted  the  most  faithful  service, 
if  for  educational  light  and  leading  Boston  has 
been  preeminent  during  this  period,  may  it  not  be 
said,  while  every  other  valid  claim  is  cheerfully  al- 
lowed, that  no  other  personal  influence  has  been 
comparable  with  that  which  flowed  from  Channing's 
mind  and  heart  ? 

On  theological  and  religious  lines  his  influence 
was  less  apparent  in  the  earlier  stages  of  his  post- 
humous fame  than  on  those  obviously  social  and 
philanthropic.  The  controversy  excited  by  Theo- 
dore Parker's  South  Boston  Sermon  and  his  "  Dis- 
course on  Matters  pertaining  to  Religion  "  jangled 
the  bells  of  Channing's  funeral  solemnity  and  made 
a  painful  discord  in  the  Unitarian  ranks  for  many 
years.  Here  a  sense  of  having  shirked  or  faltered, 
there  a  fear  of  catching  Parker's  taint  infected  the 
Unitarian  consciousness  with  a  certain  torpor  of 
timidity  and  shame.  "  It  is  almost  a  fact,"  says 
William  C.  Gannett,  "  that  there  is  no  Unitarian 
history  from  1845  to  1865."  But  this  inclusion 
wrongs  the  years  of  Dr.  Gannett's  presidency  of 
the  Association,  1847-1851,  and  those  of  Free- 
man Clarke's  ascendency,  1861-1865.  Dr.  Clarke 
might  well  speak  of  the  denomination,  as  he  found 
it  in  1859,  as  "a  discouraged  denomination."  It 
had  been  given  over  to  that  "Unitarian  ortho- 


434  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

doxy,"  the  growth  of  which  Channing  had  de- 
plored in  liis  last  years,  and,  in  ironical  defiance  of 
his  spirit,  those  of  the  conservative  party  called 
themselves  "  Channing  Unitarians,"  making  his 
doctrinal  positions,  more  or  less  accurately  mider- 
stood,  ends  beyond  which  there  must  be  no  advance. 
Nevertheless  when  the  National  Conference  was 
organized  in  1865,  in  response  to  Dr.  BeUows's 
impassioned  plea  for  a  new  comprehension  of 
Unitarian  principles  and  ideals,  an  elaborate  creed, 
which  was  earnestly  recommended  to  the  Con- 
ference, was  rejected  by  an  overwhelming  vote ;  and 
from  that  time  onward,  with  some  variable  winds, 
the  course  has  been  pretty  steadily  towards  Chan- 
ning's  spirit,  rather  than  to  his  doctrine,  as  the 
mark  of  our  high  calling. 

In  the  mean  time  there  was  widening  appreciation 
of  Channing  out  of  Unitarian  bounds  and  in  Eu- 
ropean countries.  Kenan's  remarkable  essay  was 
inspired  by  his  desire  to  check  an  enthusiasm  for 
Channing  in  France  which  to  Kenan's  critical 
temper  appeared  overstrained,  but  his  protest  was 
one  of  the  most  significant  tributes  paid  to  Chan- 
ning's  historical  importance  and  the  universality  of 
his  moral  influence.  The  most  active  spirit  in  the 
French  movement  back  to  Channing  was  M.  La- 
boulaye,  and,  apparently,  it  was  the  "  Memoir  "  that 
gave  the  first  impulse  to  his  admiration.  He  went  on 
for  many  years  translating  and  recommending  Chan- 
ning's  "  Works,"  and  they  prepared  him  for  that 
intelligent  sympathy  with  America  which  possessed 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  435 

him  wholly  when  he,  too,  wrote  of  "  The  Uprising 
of  a  Great  People  "  ^  in  a  manner  peculiarly  grate- 
ful to  the  American  heart  when  there  was  a  fear- 
ful dearth  of  European  sympathy  with  our  North- 
ern States.  He  said,  "  If  Channing  were  but  one 
sectary  more  in  the  religious  Babel,  I  should  not 
have  called  attention  to  him ;  "  but  he  was  "  a 
good  man  who,  all  his  life,  consumed  by  one  senti- 
ment and  idea,  sought  truth  and  justice  with  all  the 
forces  of  his  intellect  and  loved  God  and  man  with 
all  the  strength  of  his  heart."  Kenan's  qualifications 
did  not  prevent  others  from  following  Laboulaye. 
M.  de  Remusat  furnished  an  elaborate  preface  to 
an  excellent  book  of  four  hundred  pages  upon 
Channing' s  life  and  work,  hailing  him  as  a  prophet 
who  belonged  to  no  one  sect  or  communion,  but 
only  to  the  universal  church  of  Christ.  But  this 
was  Protestant  commendation.  So  was  not  that 
of  M.  Lavollee,  whose  "  Channing :  sa  Vie  et  sa 
Doctrine  "  was  the  enthusiastic  tribute  of  a  Roman 
Catholic  scholar,  his  book  of  such  literary  distinc- 
tion as  to  be  crowned  by  the  Academy  of  Moral 
and  Political  Sciences.^  He  found  Channing's  most 
distinctive  character  in  his  universal  love  and  fra- 
ternity, and   after  this  in  his  confidence   and  — 

1  The  title  of  Count  Gasparin's  book,  the  spirit  of  which  was 
precisely  Laboxilaye's. 

2  M.  Jules  Simon,  president  of  the  society,  said,  "  It  is  as  the 
adviser  of  the  people  that  Channing  has  attained  to  an  unpre- 
cedented sublimity  and  efficacy.  .  .  .  Time  cannot  weaken  the 
force  of  his  apostolic  teachings,  which  deserve  the  attention  of  all 
nations." 


436  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

audacity !  He  asked,  "  How  can  any  one  help  lov- 
ing, in  Channing,  the  defender  of  all  the  oppressed, 
the  advocate  of  all  the  miserable,  the  truly  Chris- 
tian apostle,  consecrating  his  energies  and  his  life 
to  the  emancipation  of  the  negro,  to  the  spread  of 
popular  education  ?  How  can  any  one  help  par- 
doning in  him,  after  so  many  noble  efforts,  an  excess 
of  optimism  and  of  confidence  carried,  perhaps, 
to  the  verge  of  illusion  ?  "  He  compares  Channing 
with  Fenelon  and  says,  "  Both  have  vowed  to  Jesus 
a  love  equally  lively  and  profound,  but  while  the 
one  adores  and  prays,  the  other  contemplates  and 


reveres."  ^ 

In  Germany  Channing's  works  were  translated 
as  early  as  1850  and  made  a  wide  and  deep  im- 
pression, which  found  in  Baron  Bunsen,  a  devout 
Trinitarian,  its  most  significant  illustration.  In 
his  "  God  in  History,"  he  hailed  Channing  as  "  a 
grand  Christian  saint  and  man  of  God,  —  nay  also 
as  a  prophet  of  the  Christian  consciousness  regard- 
ing the  future,  destined  to  exert  an  increasing  in- 
fluence." He  said,  "  If  such  a  man,  whose  whole 
life  and  conversation,  in  the  sight  of  aU  his  fellow 
citizens,  stand  in  absolute  correspondence  with  the 
earnestness  of  his  Christian  language,  and  are  with- 
out a  spot,  be  not  a  prophet  of  God's  presence  in 

^  Some  of  the  more  recent  studies  of  Fdnelon  —  Bruneti^re's, 
Crousl^'s,  and  St.  Cyres'  —  make  for  the  persuasion  that  Chan- 
ning, though  "  hardly  Christian  "  measured  by  M.  Lavoll^e's  theo- 
logical standards,  was  of  a  more  consistent  saintliness  than  the 
ecclesiastical  courtier  who  pacified  the  Huguenots  of  Saintonges 
by  a  policy  of  "  wholesale  dissimulation,  bribery,  and  espionage." 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  437 

humanity,  I  know  of  none  such."  In  England 
Channing  has  had  much  cordial  recognition,  and 
that  increasingly.  This  has  sometimes  had  the 
connotation  of  a  claim  upon  his  sympathy  with 
orthodox  opinion,  but  oftener  it  has  been  inspired 
by  a  perception  of  a  spirit  in  him  that  transcends 
all  sectarian  differences.  It  was  not  Channing's 
approximation  to  an  orthodox  Christology  that  de- 
lighted Frederick  Robertson,  but  his  enthusiasm 
for  the  moral  worth  of  Jesus.  It  was  because 
Channing  was  one  of  the  pioneers  of  spiritual  free- 
dom that  Dean  Stanley,  when  here  in  America, 
reverently  visited  his  grave  with  PhiUips  Brooks. 

The  centennial  of  Channing's  birth,  April  7, 
1880,  was  signalized  by  a  public  recognition  of 
his  character  and  influence  which  extended  far  be- 
yond the  boundaries  of  the  Unitarian  denomina- 
tion. While  the  local  celebrations,  here  and  abroad, 
were  conducted  by  Unitarians,  there  were  many 
cordial  responses  to  the  invitations  extended  to 
evangehcal  leaders,  and  on  the  part  of  these  there 
was  ample  acknowledgment  of  Channing's  histori- 
cal significance,  his  softening  of  the  harsher  creeds, 
his  superiority  to  sectarian  narrowness,  his  philan- 
thropic spirit,  and  of  the  impetus  given  by  him  to 
social  improvement  and  reform.  In  Brooklyn, 
Henry  Ward  Beecher's  clearest  note  was  that  of 
rejoicing  over  the  improvement  of  Channing's  views 
on  those  of  Lyman  Beecher.  There  was  no  juster 
word  than  that  of  the  Jewish  Rabbi,  Dr.  Gustav 
Gottheil,  my  honored  friend,  who  said :  — 


438  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

The  impression  I  have  gathered  from  Dr.  Channing's 
writings  is  that  his  theory  of  Christianity  cannot  be  sub- 
stantiated by  the  literary  and  historical  proofs  on  which 
he  relied  ;  but  it  participated  in  his  own  deeply  moral 
nature,  his  own  great  mind,  his  deep  and  loving  heart ; 
he  roams,  as  it  were,  in  the  ancient  halls,  calling  to  his 
aid  all  the  spirits  which  he  thought  would  minister  to 
the  ideal  which  alone  could  satisfy  his  own  spiritual 
needs  and  those  of  his  generation.  .  .  .  Though  he  al- 
ways meant  to  speak  as  a  disciple,  he,  in  truth,  spoke  as 
a  master.  You  feel  when  you  read  him  that  he  was 
much  bolder  than  he  knew,  and  that  all  his  thoughts 
have  the  force  and  freshness  of  a  spontaneous  mind, 
and  do  not  state  what  he  found  in  the  book,  but  in  his 
own  reason  and  conscience. 

The  centennial  marked  among  Unitarians  a  nota- 
ble decline  of  tlie  attempt  to  make  Channing's 
theology  the  standard  of  Unitarian  theological  pro- 
priety, a  notable  appeal  to  his  free  spirit  for  its 
encouragement  and  justification  of  a  radical  intel- 
lectual transformation.  All  of  the  men  who  had 
known  Channing  well  had  not  yet  gone  over  to  the 
majority,  and  from  Dewey,  Furness,  Bellows,  Bar- 
tol,  and  others,  there  was  much  tranquil  recollec- 
tion of  the  impression  made  by  his  living  presence 
on  their  lives. ^     The  seventy-fifth  anniversary  of 

1  Incidental  to  the  centennial  celebration  was  the  laying  of 
the  corner-stone  of  the  beautiful  Channing  Memorial  Church  in 
Newport,  with  a  sermon  equal  to  the  day  by  Dr.  Bellows,  escap- 
ing wholly  from  the  boimds  of  Channing's  doctrine  into  the  free- 
dom of  his  spirit.  The  city  of  his  birth  also  commemorates  him, 
since  1893,  with  a  statue,  the  work  of  W.  Clarke  Noble,  and  the 
gift  of  William  G.  Weld  of  Boston.    The  centennial  of  Channing's 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD  !  439 

the  original  meeting  of  the  American  Unitarian 
Association  was  celebrated  in  Boston  with  great 
pomp  and  circumstance.  A  significant  feature  was 
the  equal  honor  paid  to  Channing,  Parker,  Emer- 
son, and  Martineau,  by  men  carefully  chosen,  each 
for  his  special  task,  while  delegates  from  every 
part  of  Europe  and  from  Asia  added  their  voices 
to  the  domestic  "  tumult  of  acclaim."  The  inter- 
pretation of  Channing  fell  to  William  C.  Gannett, 
and  to  say  that  it  was  conceived  in  perfect  sym- 
pathy with  Channing's  spirit  is  its  sufficient  praise. 
The  keynote  was  struck  in  the  title,  "  Channing 
an  Apostle  of  the  Spiritual  Life."  Channing's 
great  emphases  were  driven  home,  mainly  in  his 
own  words,  —  the  superiority  of  character  to  sect  or 
creed  ;  goodness,  alike  in  man  and  God,  the  supreme 
object  of  admiration  and  desire.  "  To-day's  New 
Orthodoxy,"  he  said,  "is  a  belated  Unitarianism. 
Largely  in  doctrine,  completely  in  spirit,  in  prin- 
ciples, in  characteristic  emphases  and  tendencies, 
it  is  '  Unitarianism  with  the  copyright  run  out.'  " 
But  there  was  no  pleased  anticipation  of  a  Uni- 
tarian development  that  would  sweep  the  broken 
ranks  of  Orthodoxy  into  its  wide  array  ;  rather  a 
prophecy  of  an  inclusion  that  would  transcend  the 
differences  which  have  hitherto  prevailed,  of  a 
more  perfect  union  than  that  which,  for  a  century 

entrance  on  his  work  in  Boston  will  see  his  statue  by  Herbert 
Adams,  a  work  of  great  dignity,  and  refinement  and  an  inspired 
interpretation,  set  up  in  Boston  in  the  Public  Garden,  facing  the 
Arlington  Street  Church,  Channing's  in  the  straight  line  of  de- 
scent. 


440  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

before  the  outbreak  of  1815,  mocked  with  its 
formal  unity  the  contradictory  elements  that  were 
striving  against  each  other  in  the  agitated  bosom 
of  the  time. 

There  could  be  no  clearer  sign  of  the  extent  to 
which  that  which  was  prophecy  in  Channing  is  ful- 
filment now,  than  Harnack's  "  What  is  Chris- 
tianity ?  "  Here  is  a  book,  up  to  the  level  of  which 
have  come  hundreds  of  preachers  in  the  various 
orthodox  churches  and  thousands  of  the  laity,  so 
that  if  we  speak  of  "  Liberal  Christianity,"  we 
are  bound  to  recognize  that  only  the  smaller  part 
of  it  is  coterminous  with  the  Unitarian  develop- 
ment, or  with  this  and  the  Universahst  together. 
Comparing  Channing  with  Harnack,  what  do  we 
find  ?  That  they  are  perfectly  agreed  in  their 
opinion  of  the  essential  qualities  of  Christianity, 
the  main  teachings  of  Jesus  :  the  heavenly  king- 
dom upon  earth ;  the  Fatherhood  of  God  ;  the  in- 
finite value  of  the  human  soul ;  the  higher  right- 
eousness and  the  commandment  of  love.  In  many 
particulars  we  find  the  *' progressive  orthodoxy" 
of  Harnack  far  in  advance  of  the  positions  to  which 
Channing  had  arrived.  The  Bible,  which  was  for 
Channing  a  book  plenarily,  though  not  verbally 
inspired,  is  for  Harnack  a  collection  of  simply  and 
entirely  human  writings.  The  virgin-birth  of  Jesus, 
at  which  Channing  did  not  hesitate,  has  for  Har- 
nack no  credibility;  and  the  resurrection  of  Jesus, 
of  wliich  Channing  had  never  a  doubt,  is  for  Har- 
nack incapable  of  proof.     "  Either,"  he  says,  "  we 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  441 

must  decide  to  rest  our  belief  on  a  foundation  un- 
stable and  exposed  to  fresh  doubts,  or  else  we  must 
abandon  this  foundation  altogether  with  its  mirac- 
ulous appeal  to  our  senses."  Miracles  in  general 
were  a  great  deal  to  Channing.  He  did  not,  with 
Andrews  Norton  and  some  others,  think  it  crimi- 
nal to  accept  the  teachings  of  Jesus  on  their  in- 
trinsic merits  and  not  because  of  his  miraculous 
credentials,  but  hardly  could  he  conceive  of  Chris- 
tian belief  and  character  without  miraculous  aid. 
Harnack's  view  reproduces  that  of  Theodore  Parker. 
It  is,  in  Harnack's  words,  "  The  question  of  miracles 
is  of  relative  indifference  compared  with  every- 
thing else  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  gospels." 
The  doctrine  of  Christ's  double  nature  is  as  intol- 
erable to  Harnack  as  it  was  to  Channing,  but  his 
escape  from  it  is  by  a  much  straighter  path  than 
Channing' s  Arianism,  or  the  Socinianism  of  Priest- 
ley and  others.  His  view  is  purely  humanitarian. 
Channing,  indeed,  would  have  been  much  shocked 
at  his  pathetic  plea  for  our  genial  tolerance  of  the 
intellectual  mistakes  of  Jesus  in  the  matter  of 
demoniacal  possession  and  a  personal  devil. 

It  is  easy  to  make  too  much  of  any  personal 
example.  Turn  we,  then,  to  the  hundreds  of  books 
emanating  from  preachers  and  professors  who  are 
in  good  and  regular  standing  in  orthodox  churches 
and  theological  schools,  books  written  by  such  men 
as  Abbott,  Gordon,  Harris,  Paine,  Van  Dyke, 
whose  average  constructions  are  much  more  at 
variance  with  the  traditional  standards  than  were 


442  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

those  of  Dr.  Channing.  Turn  we  to  the  many 
thousands  who  confidently  reject  the  doctrine  of 
eternal  punishment,  where  Channing  made  only  a 
faint  demur.  Turn  we  to  the  Presbyterian  Gen- 
eral Assembly  (1902),  presided  over  by  Henry  C. 
Van  Dyke,  to  whom  Calvin's  God  is  "  a  nightmare 
horror  of  monstrosity,  infinitely  worse  than  no 
God  at  all."  "  To  worship  such  a  God,"  he  says, 
"is  to  worship  an  omnipotent  devil."  Similarly 
thought  the  Assembly,  and  made  such  changes  in 
the  Westminster  Confession  as  would,  if  made  in 
1815  by  the  New  England  Congregationalists,  have 
made  their  segregation  into  two  mutually  distrust- 
ful and  oppugnant  bodies  almost  or  quite  impossible. 
When  we  consider  how  frail  the  formal  recession 
from  their  traditional  symbols  by  ecclesiastical 
bodies  generally  is  compared  with  the  large  utter- 
ance of  men's  personal  talk,  we  may  begin  to 
understand  how  extended  and  how  general  the 
departure  in  the  unbroken  orthodox  communions 
is  from  those  conceptions  of  religion  which  were 
intolerable  for  Channing' s  mind  and  heart. 

What  Channing' s  part  has  been  in  this  amelio- 
ration of  dogma  only  the  most  foolhardy  will  pre- 
sume to  say.  To  overrate  it  is  an  easy  matter, 
such  immense  cooperation  has  it  had  from  the  sci- 
entific and  other  intellectual  forces  of  the  period. 
Moreover,  many  of  the  theological  and  critical 
positions  taken  up  so  cheerfully  by  liberal  Ortho- 
doxy are  far  in  advance  of  those  to  which  Chan- 
ning attained  with  much  hesitation  and  anxiety. 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  443 

Here,  certainly,  he  has  not  been  the  forerunner. 
On  critical  lines  there  has  been  obvious  gain  on 
his  naive  subordination  of  the  irrational  and  dis- 
suasive parts  of  the  Bible  to  those  which  were  for 
him  rational  and  engaging.  On  theological,  and 
more  especially  Christological,  lines,  the  gain  has 
been  less  obvious.  The  Christology  of  Fairbairn 
or  Gordon,  for  example,  has  less  intellectual  serious- 
ness and  logical  coherency  than  the  inherited  creed ; 
less  than  the  Arian  mechanism  with  which  Chan- 
ning  set  out  or  the  Socinian  story-book  contrivance, 
—  a  titular  sonship  bestowed  on  the  good  human 
Jesus  as  a  reward  of  merit ;  far  less  than  the  hu- 
manitarian conception  to  which  he  finally  arrived. 
But  none  of  these  considerations  touches  the 
heart  of  Channing's  prophetical  relation  to  the 
generations  that  have  intervened  between  his  time 
and  ours  and  to  those  which  are  now  pressing  for- 
ward into  life.  To  his  contemporaries  he  was  a 
distinguished  theologian;  seen  from  our  present 
vantage,  his  theology  is  the  least  part  of  him.  Our 
present  orthodoxy  might  have  adopted  much  more 
of  his  opinion,  or  have  advanced  much  more 
from  his  positions,  and  his  main  significance  would 
not  be  seriously  changed.  For  this  inhered  in 
his  moral  inversion  of  the  Copernican  astronomy. 
This  world  was  central  to  his  religious  aspiration. 
He  preached  the  kingdom  of  heaven  uj)on  earth. 
Not  to  save  men's  souls  for  heaven  or  from  hell 
was  the  conscious  purpose  of  his  ministry,  once  he 
had  come  into  clear  self-consciousness,  but  to  save 


444  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

men  in  their  physical,  intellectual,  moral,  and 
spiritual  entirety,  from  foolish  wasting  of  their 
powers,  and  for  the  upbuilding  on  the  earth  of  a 
divine  society.  Nothing  has  been  more  character- 
istic of  the  last  half  century  of  religious  thought 
than  the  shifting  of  its  centre  of  gravity  from 
another  world  to  this.  Theology  has  come  to 
sociology  as  John  the  Baptist  came  to  Jesus  in  the 
New  Testament  legend,  saying,  "  Thou  must  in- 
crease and  I  must  decrease ;  "  and  such  has  been 
the  working  out.  No  one  pretends  that  all  this 
has  been  an  effect  of  which  Channing  was  the 
cause,  but  Channing's  anticipation  of  it  all  was 
wonderful.  The  new  social  enthusiasm  was  all 
there  in  his  brooding  mind  and  yearning  heart. 
All  that  we  have  seen  of  this  has  been  the  progres- 
sive realization  of  his  hope  and  dream. 

Moreover,  he  has  been  the  critic  equally  with 
the  prophet  of  the  new  social  spirit.  He  was  not 
of  those  who  believe  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
comes  entirely  without  observation.  He  fancied 
great  improvements  possible  in  the  social  organiza- 
tion. Perhaps  he  looked  with  a  too  sanguine  hope 
to  such  experiments  as  those  at  Mendon  and  Red 
Bank  and  Brook  Farm.  But  he  never  made  the 
mistake  which  is  so  common,  —  he  never  imagined 
that  an  ideal  society  could  be  constructed  out  of 
bad  men  or  men  indifferently  good.  He  knew 
that,  given  the  most  perfect  social  organization, 
with  men  as  they  are  now,  the  joint  result  would 
not  be  anything  deserving  thanks  and  praise.     He 


AS  DYING  AND   BEHOLD!  445 

would  make  the  perfected  individual  the  corner- 
stone of  the  divine  society.  Only  as  men  are 
clean,  healthy,  intelligent,  educated,  virtuous,  can 
they,  in  their  combination  and  cohesion,  shape  that 
better  social  state  which  is  the  desired  of  all  na- 
tions. 

But  the  main  significance  of  Channing  was  not 
exhausted  by  his  translation  of  the  great  salvation 
out  of  the  language  and  spirit  of  other-worldli- 
ness  into  the  language  and  spirit  of  social  regen- 
eration. Equally  inherent  in  it  was  his  extremely 
practical  doctrine  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God.  What 
made  this  doctrine  a  reality  for  Channing,  when 
for  many  others  it  was  a  mere  form  of  words,  was 
his  vital  appropriation  of  its  corollary  —  the  Bro- 
therhood of  Man.  Here  was  the  religious  sanction 
of  his  social  spirit.  All  his  social  aspirations,  — 
for  improving  the  condition  of  the  poor ;  for  ele- 
vating the  laboring  classes ;  for  universal  educa- 
tion ;  for  the  emancipation  of  the  slave ;  for  the 
wiser  treatment  of  criminals ;  for  the  cure  of  in- 
temperance ;  for  the  abatement  of  money- worship 
and  the  partisan  spirit,  —  all  his  aspirations  di- 
rected to  these  ends  went  back  into  his  conscious- 
ness of  human  bi'otherhood,  and  fed  their  roots 
upon  his  "  one  sublime  idea  "  of  the  greatness  of 
the  human  soul.  This  greatness  was  a  possibility 
that  must  not  be  jeopardized  by  ignorance  and  sin  ; 
this  brotherhood  a  pledge  of  mutual  reverence  and 
forbearance,  and  of  helpfulness  in  every  strait. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  Channing's  vision  was 


446  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

not  so  prophetic  on  this  line  as  on  that  of  social 
regeneration  inhibiting  the  traditional  scheme  of 
other-world  salvation.  The  right  of  the  strong 
nations  to  subject  the  weak  to  their  good  pleasure  ; 
the  conviction  that  "  the  black,  brown,  yellow,  and 
dirty-white  people  will  have  to  go,^'  and  with  these 
the  popidation  of  the  slums  ;  a  certain  hard  com- 
placency in  the  presence  of  infernal  cruelty  whether 
at  home  or  in  our  insular  possessions ;  the  flouting 
of  our  traditional  ideals  of  popular  rights  as  senti- 
mental constructions  for  which  we  have  no  lonofer 
any  use,  —  these  are  so  many  aspects  of  our  time 
that  do  not  so  much  indicate  our  response  to 
Channing's  spirit  as  the  need  of  our  return  to  him 
for  guidance  in  the  doubtful  way.  Never  at  any 
time  have  we  been  more  plainly  called  to  hold 
up  our  social,  political,  and  individual  life  to  the 
searching  light  of  his  clear  eyes  than  in  this  imme- 
diate present,  when  a  certain  scepticism  of  human 
brotherhood  has  not  only  entered  into  minds  natu- 
rally inclined  to  such  scepticism,  but  has  infected 
many  whom  we  imagined  born  for  other  things. 

There  is  encouragement  for  us  when  we  turn 
from  tliis  aspect  of  contemporary  life  to  that  pre- 
sented by  its  intellectual  conditions.  The  ethics 
of  intellect  is  much  better  understood  and  much 
more  happily  exemplified  than  it  was  in  Chan- 
ning's time.  We  are  far  enough  from  realizing 
that  spiritual  freedom,  the  high  thought  of  which 
enraptured  Channing's  soul,  and  became  psalm  and 
prophecy  upon  his  lips,  but  we  cannot  read  his 


AS  DYING  AND  BEHOLD!  447 

strong  denunciations  of  contemporary  bigotry  and 
persecution,  or  his  passionate  indictments  of  the 
sectarian  spirit,  without  being  assured  that  we 
have  made  some  advance  in  these  particulars ;  yes, 
a  good  deal.  There  is  much  more  freedom  of  theo- 
logical opinion  than  there  was  formerly,  much  less 
disposition  to  measure  men's  characters  by  theo- 
logical standards ;  though  it  must,  perhaps,  be 
granted  that  the  more  genial  temper  has  the  de- 
fect of  its  quality,  —  a  slackened  earnestness  ;  a 
sentiment  of  indifference  in  the  presence  of  reli- 
gious ideas  and  ideals. 

In  no  respect  was  Channing  more  prophetic  of 
the  changes  that  have  been  developed  since  his 
death  than  in  the  decay  of  the  sectarian  spirit. 
Could  he  return  to  us,  he  would  not  appreciate  as 
would  Benjamin  Franklin  our  steam  engines  and 
telegraphs ;  he  would  be  painfully  suspicious  of 
our  enormous  wealth,  and  even  more  so  of  our 
great  fleet  of  warships  and  the  strengthening  of 
our  military  arm  ;  but  he  would  be  delighted  with 
our  Church  of  the  Divine  Amenities,  the  kindly 
sympathies  of  so  many  preachers  and  laymen  of 
the  different  sects,  the  cooperation  of  these  sects  on 
many  lines  of  social  help,  the  exchange  of  pulpits 
across  sectarian  lines  of  demarcation,  our  parlia- 
ments of  religion,  and  our  congresses  which  bring 
together,  for  the  friendly  interchange  of  opinion 
and  comparison  of  purpose,  Christians  of  every 
name,  and  with  these  the  Jew,  the  Buddhist,  the 
Brahmin,  the  Mohammedan, — 


448  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 

Self-reverent  each  and  reverencing  each, 
Distinct  in  individualities. 

And  should  he,  remaining  with  us  for  a  little 
time,  come,  on  a  day,  somewhere,  upon 

A  temple,  neither  Pag-od,  Mosque,  nor  Church, 
But  loftier,  simpler,  always  open-door'd 
To  every  breath  from  heaven,  and  Truth  and  Peace 
And  Love  and  Justice  came  and  dwelt  therein,  — 

he  would  go  in  and  feel  as  much  at  home  as  any- 
one of  the  more  recent  times,  so  open  was  his 
mind,  so  given  to  hospitality,  such  joy  had  he  in 
finding  the  good  man  wearing  the  Presbyterian 
blue,  the  Quaker  drab,  or  some  other  color  that  he 
could  not  quite  approve. 

It  is  impossible  for  any  one  to  study  Channing 
long  and  carefully  and  not  feel  that  if,  from  any 
height,  he  sees  and  knows  the  present  oider  of  the 
world,  he  finds  the  realization  of  his  hopes  far  less 
in  the  spread  of  those  particular  opinions  which 
received  his  intellectual  assent  than  in  the  soften- 
ing of  sectarian  animosities,  the  diminution  of  sec- 
tarian zeal,  the  kinder  mutual  regards  of  different 
bodies  of  believers,  the  enlarging  sympathy  of  the 
world's  great  religions,  and  the  labors  of  those 
men  who  are  doing  what  they  can  to  lessen  party 
spirit,  to  improve  social  conditions,  and  to  uphold, 
in  spite  of  proud  contempt  and  rancorous  opposi- 
tion, the  things  that  make  for  peace. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abbot,  Rev.  Abiel,  n.,  117. 

Abbott,  Dr.  Lyman,  441. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  n.,  1;  n.,  37; 
n.,  103,  104  ;  n.,  293. 

Adams,  Henry,  "  History  of  the 
United  States,"  n.,  66;  69;  quoted, 
90;  190. 

Adams,  Herbert,  statue  of  Channing, 
n.,  439. 

Adams,  John,  President  of  the  United 
States,  37,  38;   105. 

Adams,  Rev.  John  Coleman,  address 
on  Ballon,  n..  111. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  190;  estimate  of 
the  "  Slavery  "  pamphlet,  276,  277. 

Adams,  Samuel,  death  of,  69. 

Aikenhead,  young  martyr,  95. 

Aikin,  Dr.  John,  207. 

Aikin,  Miss  Lucy,  corresponds  with 
Channing,  206,  207;  382. 

Alcott,  Bronson,  312;  interesting  to 
Channing,  323. 

Alcott,  Louisa  M., '' Transcendental 
Wild  Oats,"  n.,  323. 

Allen,  Dr.  A.  V.  G.,  "  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards," n.,  57. 

Allen,  Dr.  Joseph  Henry,  "  Unitarian- 
ism  since  the  Reformation,"  u.,  96, 
n.,  105;  "Nineteenth  Century  Re- 
ligion," n.,  410. 

Allston,  Washington,  12;  25;  college 
mate  of  Channing,  n.,  29;  describes 
Channing,  33;  34;  marries  Chan- 
ning's  sister,  170;  Coleridge  writes, 
174;  196;  217;  portrait  of  Chan- 
ning, 359;  395. 

American  Unitarian  Association  or- 
ganized, 179;  Aaron  Bancroft  first 
president  of,  181;  Channing  makes 
report  of,  182;  n.,  215;  seventy- 
fifth  anniversary  of,  438,  439. 


Ames,    Fisher,    59;      described,    68; 

member  of  the  Essex  "Junto,"  69; 

151;  389. 
Amiel,  80. 

Angelo,  Michael,  150. 
Autram,  Mary,  maiden  name  of  John 

Channing's  wife,  7. 
Apple  ton,  Nathaniel,  opinions  of,  98, 

99. 
Appleton,  Thomas  G.,  362. 
Aristotle,  quoted,  83. 
Armstrong,  Rev.  Mr.,  eulogy  on  the 

death  of  Channing,  n.,  422. 
Armstrong,    Rev.     Richard    A.,    his 

"  Man's  knowledge  of  God,"  255. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  criticism  upon  Mil- 
ton's poetry,  197;  "Literature  and 

Dogma,"  226;  388. 
Austen,  Jane,  208. 
Austin,   James  T.,  260;    attacks  the 

"Slavery"    pamphlet,     277,    278; 

flouts     Channing's    resolutions    at 

FaneuilHall,  285,  n.,  286;  296;  345; 

346. 

Bacon,  Henry,  funeral  address,  n., 
422. 

Bacon,  Lord,  9;  381. 

Baillie,  Joanna,  208;  Channing  writes, 
n.,  378,  382. 

Baldwin,  William  H.,  n.,  394. 

Ballou,  Rev.  Adin,  founder  of  Hope- 
dale,  322;  352. 

Ballou,  Rev.  Hosea,  78;  110,  111,  112; 
Channing  draws  nearer  to,  254. 

Bancroft,  Aaron,  first  president  of 
the  American  Unitarian  Associa- 
tion, 181. 

Bancroft,  George,  68;  story  about, 
n.,  277. 

Barbauld,  Mrs.,  207. 


452 


INDEX 


Bartlett,  Rev.  John,  minister  in  Mar- 

blehead,  Mass.,  n.,  158. 
Bartol,  Dr.  Cyrus  A.,  "  Radical  Prob- 
lems,"   n.,   310;     fimeral    address, 
n.,  422. 
Beecher,  Rev.  Henry  Ward,  at  Chan- 

ning's  centennial,  437. 
Beecher,    Dr.    Lyman,    characterizes 

Boston  society,  223;  437. 
Belknap,  Rev.  Jeremy,  founder  of  the 
Massachusetts    Historical    Society, 
68;  minister  of  Federal  Street,  107, 
108;     preaches  installation   sermon 
for  Dr.  Morse,  n.,  127. 
Bellamy,  quoted,  104. 
Bellows,   Dr.   Henry    W.,   eulogy   on 
Channing,  n.,  422;   National  Confer- 
ence organized,  434;   sermon  at  lay- 
ing of    corner-stone   of    Channing 
Memorial  Church,  138. 
Belmont,  Perry,  buys  Channing's  Oak- 
land "  garden,"  n.,  374. 
Belsham,    Rev.    Thomas,    95;    letter 
from  Buckminster,  n.,  119;  Life  of 
Theophilus  Lindsey,  128,  129,  130; 
131 ;  132 ;  replies  to  Channing's  ser- 
mon, n.,  178;  230;  341. 
Berkeley,  Channing  studies,  42;  428. 
Birney,  James  G.,  suffers  from  mob, 
280;     presidential    candidate,    281; 
quoted,  409. 
Birrell,  Sir  Augustine,  life  of  Hazlitt, 

n.,  107. 
Blaine,  James  G.,  at  Concord  Centen- 
nial, n.,  30,  31;  407. 
Bonet-Maury,  "  Early  Sources  of  Eng- 
lish Unitarian  Christianity,"  92,  n., 
96. 
Borromeo,  401. 
Bossuet,  68. 
Boswell,  354. 

Bourg,  Baron  de,  journal  of,  4,  5. 
Bowditch,  Dr.  Henry  I.,  n.,  273. 
Bowditch,  Nathaniel,  starts  "  Practi- 
cal Navigator,"  68. 
Briant,  Lemuel,  an  early  Unitarian, 

103;  104;  105;  109. 
Brooks,  Rev.  Charles  T.,  "A  Centen- 
nial Memory,"  n.,  7;  n.,  12,  34,  63; 
Channing's  charge  at  his  installa- 
tion, n.,  325;  379;  eulogy  on  Chan- 
ning, n.,  422. 
Brooks,  Peter  C,  portrait  of  a  lay- 
man, 297. 


Brooks,  Phillips,  44;  visits  Channing's 

grave  with  Dean  Stanley,  437. 
Brougham,  Lord,  criticises  Channing, 

202,  204,  205,  206. 
Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  196. 
Browning,    Robert,    quoted,    n.,  18; 

quoted,  246. 
Brownson,    Orestes    A.,   321;     Chan- 
ning's "  Likeness  to  God  "  appeals 

to  him,  350. 
Brunetiere,  study  of  F^nelon,  n.,  436. 
Bryant,  William  CuUen,  196;    writes 

hymn  for  memorial  service,  423. 
Buckminster,  Dr.   Joseph,  father    of 

Joseph  Stevens,  quoted,  91 ;  100. 
Buckminster,   Rev.    Joseph    Stevens, 

college  mate  of  Channing,  n.,  29; 

67;     comes  to  Brattle  Street,  72; 

account  of,  88,  89,  90,  91;  quoted, 

n.,  119;  Andrews  Norton's  opinion 

of,  148;  328. 
Bunsen,  Baron,  eulogizes  Channing, 

436. 
Buren,  Martin  Van,  405. 
Burke,  Edmund,  n.,  41;  42;  68. 
Bums,  Anthony,  returned  to  slavery, 

431. 
Burns,  Robert,  68. 

Burr,  President,  father  of  Aaron,  104. 
Bushnell,  Dr.  Horace,  79;  97;  method 

compared    with    Channing's,    237; 

307. 
Butler,  Bishop,  50;  60. 
Byron,  Lord,  209. 

Cabot,  Miss  Eliza  Lee,  marries  Dr. 
FoUen,  381. 

Cabot,  George,  59;  president  of  Hart- 
ford Convention,  69;  190. 

Calvin,  John,  93,  430;  442. 

Campbell,  60. 

Carlyle,   Thomas,  33;  173;  174;  207. 

Carpenter,  Dr.  Lant,  Channing  writes 
to,  342. 

Carpenter,  Rev.  Mr.,  eulogy  on  Chan- 
ning, n.,  422. 

Chace,  Elizabeth  Buffum,  Channing 
meets  in  her  childhood,  377,  378. 

Chaloner,  Mary,  marries  John  Chan- 
ning, Dr.  Channing's  grandfather, 
6. 

Channing,  Ann,  dies,  170. 

Channing,  Edward,  Harvard  profes- 
sor, son  of  Ellery,  n.,  6. 


C^f\f^(^ 


*Of^^f€^ 


INDEX 


453 


Chanuing,  Edward  Tyrrel,  Chan- 
ning'a  brother,  n.,  5;  n.,  9. 

Channing,  Elizabeth  P.,  daughter  of 
Rev.  George  Channing,  n.,  6; 
"Kindling Thoughts,"  n.,  3G8. 

Channing,  Eva,  daughter  of  William 
Francis,  and  granddaughter  of  Dr. 
Channing,  n.,  5. 

Channing,  Francis,  Channing's  bro- 
ther, n.,  5;  quoted,  49;  goes  to  Cam- 
bridge, 55;  walks  with  his  brother, 
62;  encourages  his  brother,  71;  84. 

Channing,  George,  brother  of  Chan- 
ning, 4G2. 

Channing,  Henry,  uncle  of  Dr.  Chan- 
ning, 26;  64;  71. 

Channing,  John,  father  of  John,  great- 
grandfather of  Channing,  6,  7. 

Channing,  John,  father  of  William, 
grandfather  of  Dr.  Channing,  6. 

Channing,  Lucy,  Channing's  mother, 
n.,  5. 

Channing,  Mary,  Dr.  Channing's 
daughter,  n.,  344. 

Channing,  Mrs.  Ruth,  Channing's 
wife  ;  with  him  in  Europe,  173  ;  n., 
212 ;  accompanies  her  husband  to 
St.  Croix,  364  ;  367. 

Channing,  Walter,  Channing's  bro- 
ther, n.,  5. 

Channing,  William,  Channing's  fatlier, 
n.  5 ;  son  of  John,  6 ;  birth  and  ac- 
count of,  7,  8,  9. 

Channing,  Dr.  William  Ellery,  place 
of  birth,  1;  early  associations  with 
Newport,  2,  3,  4;  date  of  birth  and 
baptism,  5  ;  ancestry,  6-13  ;  early 
life,  14-20  ;  writes  of  Stiles,  18,  20, 
21;  recollections  of  Dr.  Hopkins, 
21-23;  youthful  traits,  25-27;  en- 
ters Harvard,  28-31;  work  at  Har- 
vard, 32;  health  in  college,  33; 
portrait  by  Malbone,  34;  club  life 
at  Harvard,  34,  35;  impressions  of 
college  life,  35;  relations  to  free 
thought  and  politics,  37;  address 
on  behalf  of  Harvard  students,  38 ; 
commencement  oration,  39 ;  writing 
of  his  college  years,  39,  40;  influ- 
ence of  Hutcheson,  41;  attracted 
to  Ferguson,  41;  reads  and  stud- 
ies Locke,  etc.,  42;  interest  in 
Shakespeare,  43;  goes  to  Virginia, 
44;  convictions  on  slavery,  45;  po- 


litical environment,  46;  reads  the 
radical  socialists,  47 ;  writes  of  social 
reform,  48, 49;  religious  experience, 
50,  51 ;  physical  misery  and  method 
of  living,  52,  53;  returns  to  New- 
port, 54, 55;  in  Redwood  Libraryv5G  ; 
iiifluence  of  Hopkins,  57;  preaches 
for,  58;  returns  to  Cambridge,  58, 
59;  thoughts  on  different  writers, 
60,  61 ;  physical  weakness,  61 ;  62 ; 
unites  with  the  church,  62 ;  draws  up 
articles  of  belief,  62,  63;  first  ser- 
mon, 63,  64;  accepts  a  call  to  Fed- 
eral Street,  64;  ordination,  64;  con- 
duct of  service,  65;  name  of  church 
building,  65;  social  status  of  Boston, 
66,  67;  intellectual  and  political,  67- 
69;  makes  home  with  Stephen  Hig- 
ginson,  Jr.,  70;  gloom  settles  upon 
him,  70;  troubled  with  "subjects," 
71  ;  writes  his  uncle,  71  ;  manner 
of  preaching,  72;  physical  delicacy, 
73;  thought  considered  Calvinistic, 
74  ;  sermon  preached  at  Rev.  John 
Codman's  ordination,  74,  75  ;  bur- 
den of  his  early  preaching,  75,  n., 
75;  76;  reprehension  of  New  Eng- 
land Calvinism,  78;  fore-feeling  of 
Bushnell,  79;  Arian  conception  of 
Jesus,  80,  81 ;  anti-war  sermon,  1812, 
82:  idea  of  perfection,  82,  83;  in- 
vites mother  to  Boston,  84;  man- 
agement of  home  affairs,  84—86; 
his  Federalism,  86;  for  freedom  of 
speech  in  war  time,  87,  compared 
with  Buckminster,  89-91;  92;  94; 
95;  97;  representative  personal  ex- 
perience of,  99;  criticised  by  Haz- 
litt,  107  ;  thought  anticipated  by 
Ballou,  110;  writes  for  the  "  Pano- 
plist,"  117  ;  preaches  Mr.  Codman's 
ordination  sermon,  118;  121;  Cal- 
vinistic in  thought,  122;  devout  bib- 
licism,  123 ;  sjnnpathy  with  Buck-' 
minster  ana  Thacher,  123;  opinions 
and  disposition  contrasted,  124,  125; 
urges  Worcester  to  edit  the  "  Chris- 
tian Disciple,"  126;  rare  sense  of 
importance  of  free  inquiry,  127, 
roused  by  Evarts's  review  in  "  Pano- 
plist,"  130 ;  writes  letter  to  his 
friend  Thacher,  131 ;  difference  from 
Belsham,  132;  the  "  silent  brother- 
hood," 133,  134;  exclusive  policy, 


454 


INDEX 


134,  135;  replies  to  Worcester's  let- 
ters, 135,  136;  137;  writes  on  the 
eystem  of  exclusion,  138-140;  moral 
argument  against   Calvinism,   140- 

i;   ^143;    Baltimore    Sermon,    144-147; 

f  149;  150;  strikes  seldom  but  hard, 
151;  Woods  and  Stuart  controver- 
sies, 153, 154;  "  Dedham  decision," 
155;  Election  Sermon,  etc.,  156, 157; 
institutes  the  Berry  Street  Confer- 
ence, 158,  159,  160;  delivers  the 
Dudleian  Lecture,  160  ;  Election 
Sermon  on  spiritual  freedom,  163- 
167;  Discourses,  Reviews,  and  Mis- 
cellanies, 167,  168,  109;  personal 
environment,  169,  170,  171;  to  Eu- 
rope, 172 ;  meets  Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth,  173,  174,  175;  returns 
from  Europe,  175;  Mr.  Gannett  be- 
comes his  colleague,  176  ;  the  two 
men  compared,  176,  177;  preaches 
Mr.  Gannett's  ordination  sermon, 
177,  178;  approves  the  Unitarian 
name,  179;  his  part  in  forming  the 
Unitarian  Association,  180;  relations 
to  Association,  181-183  ;  effect  of 
European  trip,  184;  gradual  changes 
of  thought,  185-18V;  lack  of  per- 
sonal element  in  letters,  188;  ser- 
mon on  Napoleon,  188, 189;  contrast 
of  social  temper  and  doctrine,  189, 
190;  writes  article  "The  Union," 
190-192;  views  of  tariff,  192;  Sim- 
day  mail  service,  193;  slight  refer- 
ence to  political  events,  193-195; 
man  of  letters,  195,  196;  essay  on 
Milton,  197, 198;  criticised  by  Henry 
Tuckerman,  198, 199;  self-conscious- 
ness, 199,  200;  the  preacher  essay- 
ist, 201;  criticised  by  Hazlitt  and 
Brougham,  202-204;  general  read- 
ing, 207-210;  personal  appearance 
and  pulpit  manners,  211-213  ;  effect 
of  preaching  on  health,  214;  his 
printed  works,  215,  216;  second  vol- 
ume of  sermons,  1832,  217;  unity  of 
thought,  217,  218;  conception  of 
Jesus,  219;  views  of  Christianity, 
220-222;  sermons  on  "Christian 
Evidences,"  222,  223;  his  method 
scriptural,  225,  226 ;  vice  of  this 
method,  227;  preacher  of  a  New 
Testament  unity,  228 ;  views  of 
Christ's  nature,  229  ;  escape  from 


Arianism,  230 ;  sermons  on  Christ, 
231-237;  larger  and  more  personal 
opinions,  238,  n.,  239;  concerning 
piety  and  morality,  240,  241;  reli- 
gious principle  in  human  nature, 
241, 242;  mystery  of  life,  243  ;  views 
of  human  nature,  244-247 ;  greatness 
of  the  soul,  248-250;  the  future 
life,  250-252;  idea  of  sin,  252-254; 
thought  of  God,  255-258;  impres- 
sions of  slavery  in  Virginia,  259-261 ; 
impressions  at  St.  Croix,  261,  262; 
takes  the  "Liberator,"  263;  be- 
tween two  fires,  263;  criticised  by 
Mrs.  Chapman,  264,  265;  Harriet 
Martineau's  conception  of,  265,  266; 
Lydia  Maria  Child  criticises,  267, 
268;  rebuked  by  Samuel  J.  May, 
268, 209, 270;  preaches  on  the  "  New 
York  riots,"  271;  deprecates  anti- 
Abolition  meeting,  272;  writes  "  Sla- 
very "  pamphlet,  273, 274,  275;  criti- 
cised by  Garrison  and  others,  270, 
277;  first  appearance  at  "Anti- 
slavery  Society,"  278,  279;  hospi- 
tality to  Miss  Martineau,  280;  writes 
letter  to  J.  G.  Birney,  280,  281; 
writes  letter  to  Henry  Clay,  282, 
283,  284;  Faneuil  Hall  refused  for 
Lovejoy  meeting,  284;  prepares  re- 
solutions for  Faneuil  Hall  meeting, 
285,  286;  views  compared  with  Gar- 
rison's, 287 ;  personal  relations  with 
Garrison,  287,288;  meets  Garrison, 
289;  writes  open  letter  criticising 
Henry  Clay,  290  ;  courage  on  anti- 
slavery  lines  and  work,  291-295  ; 
calls  meeting  to  establish  "  Exami- 
ner," n.,  296;  working  with  Uni- 
tarian laymen,  297;  engagement  in 
social  problems,  298 ;  opinion  of  war, 
299,  300,  301 ;  prophecies  of  thoughts 
and  things,  302 ;  address  on  temper- 
ance, 302,  303,  304,  305;  neighbor- 
hood guilds,  etc.,  305,  306,  307  ;  in- 
terest m  education,  307,  308,  309; 
leading  spirit  in  benevolent  enter- 
prises, 310;  sympathy  with  Hoi-ace 
Mann,  311 ;  breadth  of  view  in  social 
matters,  312,  313 ;  lectures  on  Self- 
Culture  and  the  Elevation  of  the 
Laboring  Classes,  314-316;  looks  for 
social  improvement  to  lower  classes, 
317-321  ;     attracted    by    different 


INDEX 


455 


fonns  of  cooperation,  322,  323;  in- 
terest in  ministry  at  large,  323,324; 
a  shrewd  escape,  325;  interest  in  the 
Benevolent  Fraternity  of  Churches, 
326,  327;   intellectual  virtue,  328, 
329,   330 ;    sermon   on  Self-Denial, 
331, 332  ;  article  on  creeds,  333,  334; 
antisectarian,    335 ;   336 ;    as   Uni- 
tarian, 337;  criticises  Unitarianism, 
338,  339  ;  distrusts  sectarian  bonds, 
340-343;  opposes  Lord's  Supper  as 
test  of  fellowfship,  344;  concerning 
Abner  Kneeland,  345,  346  ;  concern- 
ing Dr.  Noyes,  347  ;  relations  with 
John  Pierpont,  348;  relations  with 
younger  men,  349;  350;  interest  in 
Orestes  Brownson,  351 ;  concerning 
miracles,  351 ;  Brook  Farm,  352;  re- 
lations with  Emerson,  353,  354;  ap- 
proves James  Freeman  Clarke's  new 
church,  355;  friendship  with  Theo- 
dore Parker,  355,  356;  criticism  of 
Parker's  views  of  Jesus,  357 ;  open- 
mindedness,  358 ;  portraits  by  AU- 
ston  and  Gambardella,  359  ;  his  deli- 
cate frame  and  physical  infirmities, 
360-362;    infrequent  appearance  in 
pulpit,  362;  pastoral  work,  363 ;  self- 
control,  364  ;  domestic  transmigra- 
tions, 365;  life  at  Berry  Street  par- 
sonage, 366 ;  anecdote  of  Dr.  Tucker- 
man,  367;  different  opinions  regard- 
ing his  conversational  powers,  3G8; 
Dr.  Dewey's  recollections  of,  369, 
370,371;  evenings  devoted  to  light 
literature,  371,372;  domestic  happi- 
ness, 372,  373;  his  Oakland  "  gar- 
den," 373,  374;  enjoyment  of  nature, 
375,  376;   children's  love  for,  377; 
preaching  at  Oakland,  378;  associa- 
tion with  Charles  T.  Brooks,  379; 
his  principal  friends,  380;  relations 
to  Jonathan  Phillips,  381 ;  friendship 
with  Dr.  Follen,  381,  382;  literary 
friendships,  382  ;  his  isolation,  383; 
Miss  Peabody's relation  to,  383,  384; 
ideas  of    money,  384,   385;    corre- 
spondence with  Blanco  White,  385, 
380,  387 ;  generalized  conception  of, 
388,  389,  390,  391,  392;  mother  dies, 
393;  builds  new  house,  394;  ideas  on 
simple  living,  395  ;  manner  of  spend- 
ing day,  396,  397;  lectures  in  Phila- 
delphia, 398;  lecture  on  the  "Pre- 


sent Age,"    399;    sermon    on   the 
church,  400-402  ;  relation  to  Federal 
Street  Church,  402-405;  antislavery 
work,  405;  letter  to  Jonathan  Phil- 
lips criticising  Clay,  406,  407 ;  does 
not  satisfy  Garrison,  407;  "Eman- 
cipation"  pamphlet,   408-410;    the 
Follen  incident,  412  ;  publication  of 
works,  412  ;  writes  "  The  Duty  of 
the  Free  States,"   413;    friendship 
with  Sumner,  414;  preaches  for  the 
last  time  in  Federal  Street,  415;  goes 
to  Lenox,  416;  last  public  utterance  : 
the  Lenox  address,  417,  418;  arrives 
at  Bennington,  419;  last  days  and 
the  end,  420,   421;    sermons  occa- 
sioned by  his  death,  422, 423;  poets' 
contribution,  423, 424 ;  memoir  pub- 
lished, 425,  426;  reviewed  by  Garri- 
son, 426,  427,  428;  Martineau's  re- 
view,  428,    429,    430;    "Memoir" 
pertinent  to  the  political  situation, 
431, 432;  his  effect  on  philanthropy, 
433;  effect  on  theology  and  religion, 
433-435;  foreign  view  of,  436,  437; 
centennial  of  birth,  437,  438;  honor 
paid  to,  at  Seventy-fifth  Anniversary 
of  the  Unitarian  Association,  439; 
comparison  with  Hamack,  440, 441 ; 
compared  with  the  progressive  or- 
thodox, 441,  442;  prophetical  rela- 
tion to  the  generations  that  followed 
him,  443-448. 
Channing,   William  Ellery,    "Ellery 
Channing,"   son  of  Walter    Chan- 
ning; nephew  of   Channing,  n.,  5 ; 
n.,  6. 
Channing,   William    Francis,    second 
son  of  Channing,  n.,  5;  birth,  171; 
inventor  and  sociologist,  171 ;  Whit- 
tier's  autograph  letter  to,  n.,  293; 
414. 
Channing,    William    Henry,    son    of 
Francis  and  nephew  and  biographer 
of  Channing,  n.,  5  ;  describes  Chau- 
ning's  wife,  12;  40;  n.,  61;  O.  B. 
Frothingham's  memoir  of,  n.,  67  ; 
149 ;  father  dies,  170  ;  criticism  of 
the  "F6nelon"  article,  200;   213; 
edits  "  The  Perfect  Life,"  216,   n., 
224;    debt  to  Miss  Peabody,   354; 
account  of  life  at  Berry  St.  parson- 
age, 366  ;  quoted  on  the  Follen  in- 
cident, 411,  412. 


456 


INDEX 


Chapman,  Mrs.  Maria  W.,  criticises 
Channing,  264,  265,  266  ;  opinion  of 
the  "Annexation  of  Texas"  letter, 
282;  n.,  285;  288;  invites  Chan- 
ning to  meet  Garrison,  289  ;  hears 
Channing  with  Garrison,  n.,  290; 
Whittier's  letter  concerning,  n., 
293. 

Chauncy,  Dr.  Charles,  critic  of  the 
Great  Awakening,  78  ;  104 ;  109. 

Cheever,  Rev.  Dr.,  156,  157. 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  129. 

Cheverus,  Bishop,  421. 

Child,  Lydia  Maria,  sketched  by  Low- 
ell, 266  ;  publishes  her  "  Appeal," 
267;  relations  with  Clianning,  288; 
n.,  293;  383. 

"  Christian  Examiner,"  126  ;  first  pub- 
lished, 179  ;  Channing  writes  for, 
195;  197;  201;  Channing's  articles 
cause  censure,  202;  206;  "Liber- 
ator "  printed  from  "  Examiner  " 
type,  263  ;  James  T.  Austin  writes 
for,  277;  296;  308;  Dr.  Noyes  re- 
views Hengstenberg,  346,  n.,  347 ; 
Parker  reviews  Strauss's  life  of 
Jesus,  355. 

"Christian  Register,"  founding  of, 
179. 

Clarke,  Dr.  James  Freeman,  106 ;  life 
in  Kentucky,  n.,  267;  starts  new 
society,  354;  encouraged  by  Chan- 
ning, 355;  n.,  422,  423;  president 
of  Unitarian  Association,  433. 

Clarke,  Dr.  Samuel,  61 ;  94  ;  95 ;  96 ; 
condemned  by  Channing,  98,  n.,  143. 

Clarkson,  Thomas,  408. 

Clay,  Henry,  open  letter  from  Chan- 
ning, 282;  criticised  by  Channing, 
290;  speech  of  Feb.  7,  1839,  405; 
406;  letters  from  Joseph  J.  Gur- 
ney,  408;  compromises  of,  431. 

Cobbett,  William,  pamphleteer,  282. 

Codman,  Capt.  John,  74;  on  his  fa- 
ther's ordination,  75. 

Codman,  Dr.  John,  warning  from 
Channing,  75;  77;  settled  by  the 
Dorchester  Society,  118,  119. 

Coleridge,  Samuel  T.,  Channing 
meets,  173,  174;  quoted,  201;  207; 
Channing  pleased  with  his  prose, 
209;  253. 

CoUyer,  Robert,  211. 

Cone,  Dr.  Orello,  109. 


Conference,  Berry  Street,  organized, 
158  ;  forms  American  Unitarian  As- 
sociation, 179,  180. 

Cooke,  George  WiUis,  n.,  181. 

Cooke,  Parsons,  167. 

Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  196. 

Cooper,  Rev.  Samuel,  minister  of 
Brattle  Street,  105. 

Cotton,  Dr.  Charles,  n.,  217. 

Cousin,  351. 

Coverdale,  94. 

Curtis,  George  William,  appreciation 
of  old  Newport,  3;  Blaine  incident, 
n.,  30. 

Dall,  Mrs.  Caroline  H.,  n.,  212. 

Dana,  Francis,  father  of  Richard 
Henry  Dana,  n.,  28;  397. 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  n.,  28;  196. 

Defoe,  Daniel,  pamphleteer,  282. 

Degerando,  210. 

De  Quincey,  n.,  37. 

De  R^musat  writes  preface  to  book  on 
Channing,  435. 

De  Stael,  Madame,  67;  207. 

Dewey,  Dr.  Orville,  n.,  133;  160; 
Channing's  assistant,  175,  176; 
quoted,  213;  selects  sermons  of  Dr- 
Channing  for  publication,  n.,  217; 
Channing  writes  to,  312  ;  quoted, 
360;  362;  personal  recollections  of 
Channing,  369,  370,  371 ;  eulogy  on 
Channing,  n.,  422. 

"  Dial,"  The,  351,  352. 

Dickens,  Charles,  372. 

Dix,  Dorothea,  accompanies  Dr.  and 
Mrs.  Channing  to  St.  Croix,  364; 
teaches  Channing's  children,  373; 
Channing's  companionship  with,  383. 

Doddridge,  Dr.,  life  of,  108. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  431. 

Drummond,  Rev.  Mr.,  eulogy  on 
Channing,  n.,  422. 

Dwight,  John  S.,  Channing  gives  him 
charge  at  installation  in  Northamp- 
ton, n.,  325;  379. 

Dwight,  Theodore,  quoted,  86. 

Dwight,  Timothy,  86. 

Dyer,  Mary,  97. 

Eckley,  Rev.  Dr.,  minister  of  the  Old 

South,  105;  117. 
Edgeworth,  Maria,  208. 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  21;  57;  61;  74; 


INDEX 


457 


strongest  protagonist  of  Orthodoxy, 
94  ;  grandson  of  Solomon  Stoddard, 
97;  writes  "  Freedom  of  the  Will," 
98;  quoted,  100;  104;  109;  131;  n., 
178;  196;  habit  on  meditative  walks, 
396. 

Edwards,  Luther,  n.,  130. 

Eliot,  Dr.  Samuel  A.,  n.,  181. 

Ellery,  Lucy,  Dr.  Channing's  mother, 
7  ;  description  of,  12,  13  ;  n.,  29. 

Ellery,  William,  Channing's  grand- 
father, 9 ;  account  of,  10-12  ;  43  ; 
49. 

EUis,  Rev.  George  E.,  eulogy  on 
Charming,  n.,  422,  423. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  quoted,  25  ; 
33;  quoted,  73;  89;  quoted,  100; 
110,  111  ;  n.,  154 ;  quoted,  n.  160  ; 
164  ;  quoted,  173  ;  179  ;  missionary 
of  the  Association,  181  ;  182  ;  216  ; 
impressed  by  the  Dudleian  Lecture, 
220  ;  quoted,  239  ;  grateful  to  Chan- 
ning,  249 ;  343 ;  relations  with 
Channmg,  353,  354 ;  398 ;  honor 
paid  to,  at  the  Seventy-fifth  Anni- 
versary of  the  Unitarian  Associa- 
tion, 439. 

Emlyn,  94;  96;  103. 

Emmons,  Nathaniel,  quoted,  119. 

Erasmus,  93. 

Evarts,  Jeremiah,  editor  of  "  Pano- 
plist,"  130 ;  the  "  silent  brother- 
hood," 133. 

Everett,  Edward,  n.,  31 ;  succeeds 
Buckminster,  at  Brattle  St.,  90. 

Farel,  William,  93. 

Farley,  Rev.  Frederick  A.,  n.,  108;  or- 
dination of,  240;  Channing's  remark 

about  war,  300. 
Farmer,  on  miracles,  60. 
Farrar,  Prof.,  n.,  296. 
F^nelon,  n.,  59  ;   76  ;  97  ;   200 ;    201 ; 

u.,   202  ;    207  ;  307  ;  331 ;    401 ;  n., 

436. 
Ferguson,  Adam,  41 ;  42,  48 ;  59  ;  77; 

186;  298. 
Fisher,    Prof.    George    P.,  criticises 

Channing's    doctrine    of    sin,    n., 

252. 
Fisher,  Judson,  n.,  238,  239. 
Fish,  Rev.  W.  H.,  visits  Channing  at 

Newport,  322. 
Fiske,  Johc,  n.,  1 ;  68. 


Follen,  Dr.  Charles,  friend  of  Chan- 
ning, n.,  270,  271;  288;  294;  n., 
325 ;  353 ;  effect  of  news  of  death 
on  Channing,  364 ;  380 ;  Chan- 
ning's friendship  for,  381,  382  ;  405  ; 
death  of,  411,  412. 

Fox,  Rev.  Tliomas  B.,  n.,  31. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  20;  42;  196; 
349 ;  399  ;  447. 

Freeman,  Dr.  James,  receives  lay  or- 
dination at  King's  Chapel,  106; 
close  alliance  with  Socinians,  107 ; 
n.,  129;   136;  n.,  203. 

Froissart,  172. 

Frothingham,  Rev.  Octavius  Brooks, 
biographer  of  W.  H.  Channing,  u., 
5  ;  n.  67  ;  "  Boston  Unitarianism," 
90  ;  n.,  128  ;  portrait  of  his  grand- 
father, 297 ;  opinion  about  Chan- 
ning, 337. 

Fuller,  Margaret,  n.,  6. 

Fumess,  Dr.  William  Henry,  n.,  60 ; 
76  ;  195  ;  installed  minister  at  Phil- 
adelphia, n.,  211  ;  quoted,  212  ;  im- 
pressed by  the  Dudleian  Lecture, 
220  ;  denunciation  of  his  "  Notes  on 
the  Gospels,"  343 ;  attraction  of 
Channing  to,  351  ;  account  of  Chan- 
ning's preaching,  364 ;  entertains 
Channing,  398,  399. 

Gambardella,  portrait  of  Channing, 
359. 

Gannett,  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles,  a  character- 
ization of,  36  ;  n.,  60  ;  73 ;  life,  by 
W.  C.  Gannett,  n.,  80;  n.,  105;  n., 
133  ;  becomes  Channing's  colleague, 
176,  177;  leader  in  the  Unitarian 
Association,  180,  181 ;  on  Chan- 
ning's sermon  "The  Character  of 
Christ,"  232  ;  deprecates  particular 
thoughts  of  Channing,  244 ;  249  ; 
328 ;  manuscript  record  of  his 
preaching,  n.,  362,  n.,  363;  374; 
383 ;  failure  of  health,  404  ;  funeral 
address  on  Dr.  Channing,  n.,  422. 

Gannett,  Rev.  William  C,  n.,  21 ;  80  ; 
105;  n.,  133;  sermon  of,  137;  n., 
238,  239 ;  quoted,  n.,  241 ;  quoted, 
433;  on  Channing  at  seventy-fifth 
anniversary  of  the  Unitarian  Asso- 
ciation, 439. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  254  ;  appre- 
ciation   of     Channing,    265,    266; 


458 


INDEX 


"Thoughts  on  Colonization,"  267 
starts  the  "Liberator,"  262,  263 
aided  by  Mrs.  Chapman,  n.,  264 
New  York  riots  oppose,  270  ;  Boston 
mob,  272;  objections  to  "  Slavery  " 
pamphlet,  276  ;  opposition  to  Lib- 
erty Party,  281,  282,  283  ;  on  Cban- 
ning  resolutions  at  Faneuil  Hall 
meeting,  285  ;  views  compared  with 
Channing's,  287  ;  personal  relations 
with  Channing,  287,  288  ;  meets 
C  banning,  289;  311 ;  reported  re- 
mark on  Channing,  384,  387  ;  not 
satisfied  with  Channing's  letter  on 
Henry  Clay,  407  ;  408  ;  well  pleased 
with  "Emancipation"  pamphlet, 
410  ;  review  of  the  "  Memoir,"  426, 
427,  428 ;  quoted,  432. 

Garrison,  F.  J.,  n.,  276. 

Grasparin,  Count,  n.,  435. 

Oerando,  Baron  de,  Channing  sends 
his  book  to,  342. 

Gerry,  Elbridge,  quoted,  46;  n.  277. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  n.,  37;  61. 

Gibbs,  James,  architect,  72. 

Gibbs,  Mr.,  Channing's  father-in-law, 
259 ;  n.,  384. 

Gibbs,  Mrs.,  Channing's    mother-in- 
law,  176;  3G5. 

Gibbs,  Ruth,  Channing's  wife  :  maiden 
name  of,  169. 

Gibbs,    Sarah,    Channing's   sister-in- 
law,  n.,  373,  374. 

Gilbert,  Prof.,  229. 

Gilder,  Rachel  De,  19. 

Giles,  Henry,  338. 

GiUett,  E.  H.,  75;  n.,  105;  n.,  117. 

Gladstone,  William  E.,  204,  205. 

Godwin,  William,  47. 

Goethe,  207;  371. 

Gordon,  Rev.  George  A.,  441;  443. 

Gordon,  Rev.  Mr.,  sermon  on  Chan- 
ning's death,  n.,  422. 

Gorton,  Samuell,  first  settler  of  War- 
wick, R.  I.,  1,  n.,  1;  2. 

Gottheil,    Dr.    Gustav,    estimate     of 
Channing,  437,  438. 

Greenwood,  Dr.  F.  W.  P.,  328. 

Gurney,  Joseph  John,  letters  to  Henry 
Clay,  408. 

Hale,  Dr.  Edward    Everett,  n.,  277; 

369. 
Hale,  Nathan,  296. 


Hall,  Dr.  Edward  B.,  eulogy  on 
Channing,  n.,  422. 

Hallett,  B.  F.,  presents  Channing's 
resolutions  at  Faneuil  Hall  meeting 
285.  * 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  n.,  29. 

Hamack,  Prof.  A.,  175;  238;  com- 
pared with  Channing,  440,  441. 

Harris,  Dr.  George,  441. 

Hartley,  61. 

Hazlitt,  Rev.  WUliam,  father  of  Wil- 
liam Hazlitt,  106;  107. 

Hazlitt,  William,  n.,  107,  200;  criti- 
cises Channing,  202,  203. 

Hedge,  Dr.  Frederic  H.,  Blaine  inci- 
dent, 30,  31 ;  quoted,  70;  Channing's 
confidence  in,  351;  on  Channing's 
conversation,  368;  sermon  on  death 
of  Channing,   n.,  422. 

Hedge,  Levi,  professor  at  Harvard,  30. 

Helmholtz,  Prof.,  417. 

Hemans,  Mrs.  Felicia,  208;  382. 

Henry  VIII.,  92. 

Herbert,  George,  quoted,  239. 

Herford,  Rev.  Brooke,  n.,  96. 

Hicks,  Mr.,  landlord  at  Bennington, 
419. 

Higginson,  Stephen,  n.,  67;  member 
of  the  Essex  Junto,  G9. 

Higginson,  Col.  T.  W.,  "  Oldport 
Days,"  3;  33  ;  n.,  70;  n.,  290. 

Hill,  Octavia,  305. 

Hillard,  George  S.,  supports  Faneuil 
Hall  resolutions,  285 ;  414;  relations 
Mdth  Channing,  n.,  404. 

Hoar,  Hon.  George  F.,  277. 

HoUey,  Myron,  Channing  preaches 
for,  n.,  331. 

HoUey,  Sallie,  n.,  331. 

Holmes,  Dr.  Abiel,  father  of  Oliver 
Wendell,  62;  takes  part  in  Chan- 
ning's ordination,  64. 

Holmes,  Dr.  0.  W.,  quoted,  119;  423. 

Hopkins,  Dr.  Samuel,  Channing's  re- 
coUections,  21,22;  56;  influence  on 
Channing,  57;  traits  of  character, 
57,  58,  59;  89;  100;  105;  109;  122; 
124;  131. 

Hopkins,  Stephen,  11. 

Howard,  John,  401. 

Howells,  William  Dean,  208. 

Hume,  David,  42;  428. 

Hutcheson,  Francis, 40;  41;  42;n.,43; 
48;  57;  59;  60;  77;  169;  210. 


INDEX 


459 


Hutchinson,  Anne,  2;  96. 
Button,  Rev.  J.  H.,  eulogy  on  Chan- 
ning,  n.,  422. 

Irving,  Washington,  196. 

James,  Prof.  William,  n.,  152. 
Janes,  Lewis  G.,  1;    monograph   of 

Samuell  Gorton,  n.,  1. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  46;   President  of 

the  United  States.  66;  ideas  of  the 

clergy,  69. 
Johnson,  Dr.,  n.,  41;  quoted,  73. 
Johnson,  Oliver,  n.,  277;   n.,  286. 
Joubert,  80. 
Jouffroy,  42;  351. 
Judson,  113. 

Kant,  Immanuel,  n.,  43. 

Keats,  John,  209. 

Keble,  John,  quoted,  79. 

Kemble,  Fannie,  417. 

Kirkland,  Dr.,  president  of  Harvard, 
72;  quoted,  185. 

Kneeland,  Abner,  n.,  260;  330;  in- 
dicted for  blasphemy,  345,  346; 
366. 

Kossuth,  Louis,  408. 

Kuenen,  Prof.  Abraham,  347. 

Laboulaye,  Edouard,  translates  Chan- 
ning,  434,  435. 

Lafayette,  on  his  way  to  America,  5; 
n.,  31. 

Lamb,  Charles,  reply  to  Coleridge, 
201;  206. 

Lamson,  Alvan,  the  "  Dedham  deci- 
sion," 155. 

Lanfrey,  201. 

Laplace,  n.,  430. 

Lardner,  Dr.,  60;  96;  n.,  143. 

Lavoll^e,  M.,  pays  the  tribute  of  a 
Roman  Catholic  to  Channing,  435, 
436. 

Law,  William,  61. 

Legate,  Bartholomew,  94. 

Leighton,  Archbishop,  401. 

Lessing,  144;  313. 

"Liberator,"  the,  first  number  of, 
262;  publishes  Channing' 8  letter  to 
J.  G.  Bimey,  281;  Channing  writes 
a  letter  to,  287;  n.,  384. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  295;  302. 

Llndley,  96. 


Lindsey,  Theophilus,  takes  the  Unita- 
rian name,  106;  128;  n.,  129. 

Locke,  John,  42;  61;  94;  95;  96; 
n.,  143;  218. 

Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  n.,  192. 

Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  tribute  to 
Channing,  423,  424. 

Lopez,  Newport  foreign  trader,  4. 

Loring,  EUis  Gray,  opinion  of  the 
"Slavery"  pamphlet,  276;  288; 
291;  n.,  285;  concerning  Abner 
Kneeland,  346. 

Love  joy,  Elijah  P.,  shot  and  killed, 
284;   n.,260;  287. 

Lowell,  Dr.  Charles,  college  mate  of 
Channing,  n.,  29;  328. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  n.,  29;  151; 
185;  288;  elegy  on  the  death  of 
Channing,  424;  "Biglow  Papers," 
431. 

Lowell,  John,  writes  Unitarian  pam- 
phlet, 150,  151;  n.,  190. 

Lowell,  John,  Jr.,  fovmder  of  the 
Lowell  Institute,  151 ;  305. 

Lowth,  61. 

Lundy,  Benjamin,  419. 

Luther,  Martin,  70;  93. 

Lyman,  Theodore,  mayor  of  Boston, 
272. 

Lytton,  Sir  E.  Bulwer,  372. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  195;  essay  on  Mil- 
ton, 197;  204. 

Madge,  Rev.  Dr.,  eulogy  on  Chan- 
ning, n.,  422. 

Madison,  James,  n.,  29. 

Malbone,  miniature  painter,  34. 

Mann,  Horace,  308;  Chanuiug's  rela- 
tion to,  311. 

Marat,  46. 

Marshall,  Chief  Justice,  n.,  29;  44; 
46. 

Martineau,  Harriet,  criticises  Chan- 
ning, n.,  178;  264;  opinion  of  Chan- 
ning, 265,  266;  279;  enjoys  Chan- 
ning's  hospitality,  280;  289;  382; 
384;  Channing  writes  to,  415. 

Martineau,  Dr.  James,  4;  n.,  43;  93; 
n.,  96;  article  on  Channing,  131; 
a  defence  of  Unitarianism,  338; 
Channing  writes  to,  339;  position 
as  a  Unitarian,  341;  351;  Channing 
compared  with,  389 ;  honor  paid  to, 
at  the  seventy-fifth  anniversary  of 


460 


INDEX 


the  Unitarian  Association,  439;  eu- 
logy on  Channing,  n.,  422;  "Me- 
moir "  reviewed  by,  428-430. 

Mather,  Cotton,  quoted,  98. 

Mathew,  Father,  408. 

May,  Rev.  Samuel,  proposes  disunion 
resolution,  n.,  283. 

May,  Rev.  Samuel  J.,  visits  and  criti- 
cises Channing,  268-270;  invited  by 
Channing  to  preach,  270;  271;  n., 
276;  288;  non-resistant  tract,  300; 
329;  411. 

Mayhew,  Jonathan,  103;  104;  mover 
in  the  political  revolution,  105; 
143. 

McConnell,  Dr.  S.  D.,  n.,  107. 

Mills,  missionary,  113. 

Milton,  John,  94;  95;  100;  179;  195; 
197;  198;  200;  n.,  202;  205. 

Mirabeau,  n.,  43. 

Mitford,  Miss,  372. 

Montaigne,  89. 

Montesquieu,  41. 

"Monthly  Anthology,"  conducted  by 
S.  C.  Thacher,  n.,  88;  89;  117;  126. 

Morse,  Jedidiah,  publishes  his  geo- 
graphy, 68;  preaches  Election  Ser- 
mon, 70;  collaborates  with  Dr. 
Belknap,  108;  109;  starts  the  "Pan- 
oplist,"  117;  takes  part  in  Codman's 
ordination,  118;  attacks  Belsham's 
life  of  Lindsey,  127-129;  130;  131; 
132;  the  "silent  brotherhood," 
133;  135;   151. 

Morse,  S.  F.  B.,  inventor  of  the  elec- 
tric telegraph,  128. 

Motley,  J.  L.,  68. 

Murray,  Rev.  John,  78;  108,  109; 
quoted,  110;  111;  112. 

Murray,  Mrs.,  wife  of  the  Universal- 
ist  founder,  110. 

Napoleon,  173;  174;  179;  Channing 
writes  of,  188,  189;  195;  200;  201; 
202,  203;  389. 

Nelson,  389. 

Newell,  missionary,  113. 

Newman,  Francis  W.,  255. 

Newman,  John  Henry  (Cardinal),  255. 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  94 ;  95  ;  96  ;  n., 
143;  n.,  430. 

Nichols,  Ichabod,  328. 

Noble,  W.  Clarke,  his  statue  of  Chan- 
ning, n.,  438. 


Norton,  Mr.  Andrews,  67;  quoted, 
72 ;  126 ;  quoted,  148  ;  controversy 
with  Prof.  Stuart,  151-154;  180;  n., 
296,  328;  353. 
Noyes,  Rev.  Charles,  n.,  75.- 
Noyes,  Dr.  George  R.,  n.,  75;  writes 
"Examiner"  article,  346;  profes- 
sor in  Divinity  School,  347  ;  regard- 
ing Channing's  conversation,  368. 

Osgood,  Dr.,  of  Medford,  takes  part 

in  Channing's  ordination,  64  ;  127. 
Osgood,  Lucy,  n.,  127. 
Otis,  Harrison  Gray,  288. 
Owen,  Robert,  350. 

Paine,  Prof.  Levi  Leonard,  n.,  136; 
441. 

Paine,  Thomas,  his  "  Age  of  Reason," 
36;  37;  60;  publishes  "Age  of 
Reason,"  112;  282;  345. 

Paley,  60;  256. 

"  Panoplist,"  the,  starts,  117  ;  126 ; 
n.,  128;  130. 

Park,  Prof.  E.  A.  at  Andover,  57; 
121. 

Parker,  Rev,  Theodore,  63;  n.,  145; 
187  ;  207  ;  240;  241 ;  257;  261 ;  278; 
282  ;  332  ;  337  ;  343  ;  353  ;  friendahip 
with  Channing,  355-358 ;  quoted, 
377  ;  402  ;  eulogy  on  Channing,  422, 
423;  430;  South  Boston  Sermon, 
etc.,  433;  honor  paid  to,  at  sev- 
enty-fifth anniversary  of  the  Unita- 
rian Association,  439. 

Parkman,  Dr.  Francis,  366. 

Parkman,  Francis,  historian,  68. 

Pascal,  401. 

Pattison,  Mark,  197. 

Paulsen,  Friederich,  83. 

Peabody,  Dr.  A.  P.,  n.,  59;  quoted, 
105;  328;  329. 

Peabody,  Elizabeth  P.,  17 ;  Channing 
quoted,  42;  n.,  158  ;  "Reminiscen- 
ces," 207,  208 ;  n.,  210 ;  n.,  263  ;  n., 
286  ;  n.,  344  ;  concerning  Emerson's 
Divinity  School  Address,  353,  354 ; 
365;  account  of  Channing's  talk, 
369  ;  reading  with  Channing,  371 ; 
teaches  Channing's  children,  373 ; 
380;  relations  to  Channing,  383, 
384  ;  n.,  384  ;  397. 

Peabody,  Dr.  Ephraim,  328. 

Peabody,  Dr.  Francis  G.,  quoted,  326. 


INDEX 


461 


Pearson,  Prof.,  Harvard  College,  30. 

Peirce,  Rev.  Cyrus  P.,  309. 

Perkins,  James  H.,  eulogy  on  Chan- 
ning,  n.,  422. 

Phillips,  Jonathan,  classmate  of  Chan- 
ning,  n.,  29 ;  37 ;  64;  presides  at 
Lovejoy  meeting,  285 ;  Channing 
writes  open  letter,  290;  323;  324; 
342;  370;  380;  estimate  of  Chan- 
ning, 380  ;  with  Channing,  397  ;  406 ; 
410. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  judgment  of  Dr. 
Gannett'a  preaching,  176,  177;  n., 
273;  speech  at  Lovejoy  meeting, 
286 ;  294. 

Pickering,  Timothy,  68  ;  member  of 
Essex  Junto,  69  ;  n.,  190. 

Pierce,  Edward  L.,  210;  n.,  286;  293. 

Pierce,  Dr.  John,  tutor  at  Harvard, 
30;  n.,  31;  33. 

Pierpont,  Rev.  John,  declares  for  the 
Unitarian  name,  179  ;  196  ;  311 ;  re- 
lations with  Channing,  347,  348; 
eulogy  on  Channing,  n.,  422,  423. 

Plutarch,  89. 

Popkin,  Prof.,  Harvard  College,  30. 

Porter,  Dr.,  of  Roxbury,  118. 

Porter,  professor  at  Andover,  121. 

Prescott,  William  H.,  68. 

Price,  Dr.  Richard,  n.,  41 ;  42  ;  n., 
43;  50;  60;  77;  95;  96;  128. 

Priestley,  Dr.  Joseph,  42 ;  60;  95;  96; 
gives  works  to  Harvard,  107  ;  128  ; 
131;  n.,  143;  n.,  178;  230;  341; 
387;  389  ;  430,  441. 

Pynchon,  William,  statue  erected  to, 
96 ;  book  burned,  96. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  n.,  180. 

Randolph,   David    Meade,   Channing 

teaches  children  of,  in  Virginia,  44  ; 

45. 
Raphael,  150. 
Reed,    David,     first    editor   of    the 

"  Christian  Register,"  179, 180. 
"Register,  Christian,"  first  nimiber 

published,  179;  n.,  181. 
Raid,  Thomas,  42. 
Remington,   Ann,    maiden    name    of 

William  EUery's  wife,  10 ;  28. 
Renan,  quoted,  47  ;  quoted,  205,  206  ; 

216;  quoted,  n.,  216;  434. 
Rhodes,  J.  F.,  68. 


Rich,  Caleb,  a  Baptist  Calvinist,  110. 

Richter,  207;  371. 

Ripley,  Dr.  Ezra,  311. 

Ripley,  George,  352. 

Robertson,  Frederick  W.,  437. 

Robespierre,  46. 

Robinson,  John,  quoted,  117. 

Rochambeau,  Count  de,  letters  of,  5 ; 
25. 

Rogers,  Mr.,  Cbanning's  school- 
teacher, 15;  24;  34;  40. 

Roscoe,  the  Misses,  382. 

Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  47. 

Rowntree,  B.  S.,  n.,  318. 

Ruskin,  John,  171. 

RusseU,  Prof.  W.  C,  nephew  of  Chan- 
ning, n.,  6. 

Sainte-Beuve,  200. 

Salter,  Rev.  WiUiam  M.,  quoted,  314. 

Scherer,  Edmond,  197. 

Schiller,  207;  371. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  208  ;  372. 

Sedgwicks,  the,  Channing's  Lenox 
friends,  416. 

Seeley,  J.  R.,  197. 

Senancour,  80. 

Servetus,  Michael,  92;  93. 

Sewall,  Samuel  E.,  284. 

Shaftesbury,  Earl  of  (Anthony 
Cooper),  n.,  43. 

Shakespeare,  Channing's  acquaint- 
ance with,  43;  139;  201. 

Shaw,  Lemuel,  classmate  of  Chan- 
ning, n.,  29;  corresponds  with 
Channing,  49. 

Shelley,  209;  214;  371. 

Sherman,  John,  n.,  117. 

Sherman,  Gen.  W.  T.,  299. 

Sigourney,  Jane,  marries  Rev.  Fred- 
erick A.  Farley,  n.,  108. 

Sims,  Thomas,  returned  to  slavery, 
431. 

Simon,  M.  Jules,  quoted,  n.,  435. 

Smith,  Adam,  48. 

Smith,  Gerrit,  411. 

Snow,  Rev.  Herman,  engages  in  sale 
of  Channing's  works,  n.,  413. 

Socini  (the  brothers),  92. 

Southey,  209. 

Sparks,  Rev.  Jared,  ordination  of, 
144, 145. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  quoted,  192;  198; 
n.,  236. 


462 


INDEX 


Spenser,  432. 

Sprague,  Dr.  W.  B.,  life  of  Jedidiah 
Morse,  n.,  127;  323. 

Stanley,  Dean,  visits  Channing's 
grave,  437. 

Stark,  John,  419. 

Starkweather,  Ezra,  n.,  130. 

St.  Cyres,  n.,  436. 

St.  Gaudens,  Augustus,  96. 

Stephen,  Fitz-James,  150,  151. 

Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  n.,41;  n.,  43;  96. 

Stetson,  Grace  Ellery  Channing, 
daughter  of  William  Francis  and 
granddaughter  of  Channing,  n., 
5 ;  n.,  145;  publishes  Channing's 
"  Note  Book,"  216. 

Stiles,  Dr.  Ezra,  visits  at  Newport, 
n.,  5;  minister  at  Newport,  8; 
Channing  describes,  18;  20;  109; 
176. 

Stiles,  Rev.  Isaac,  father  of  Ezra 
Stiles,  n.,  21. 

Stoddard,  Solomon,  grandfather  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  97. 

Story,  Judge  Joseph,  classmate  of 
Channing,  29,  31;  writes  of  Chan- 
ning, 82;  impression  of  college  life, 
35;  quoted,  37;  38;  quoted,  n.,  38; 
n.,  59. 

Story,  William  Wetmore,  n.,  29. 

Stowe,  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher,  "  Minis- 
ter's Wooing,"  21. 

Strauss,  355. 

Streeter,  Adam,  109. 

Stuart,  Prof.  Moses,  121 ;  contro- 
versy with  Andrews  Norton,  151- 
154;  156;  attacks  Channing  in  a 
pamphlet,  166,  167;  426. 

Sumner,  Charles,  n.,  210;  286;  293; 
n.,  404;  intimacy  with  Channing, 
414. 

Sydney  Smith,  35. 

Tagart,  eulogy  on  Channing,  n.,  422. 

TallejTrand,  quoted,  340. 

Tappan,  Dr.,  professor  at  Harvard, 
36 ;  59  ;  preaches  Channing's  ordi- 
nation sermon,  64. 

Tayler,  J.  J.,  eulogy  on  Channing, 
n.,  422. 

Taylor,  Father,  310. 

Taylor,  Henry,  n.,  96. 

Taylor,  Dr.  John,  96. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  401. 


Tennent,  367,  368. 

Thacher,  Dr.  Peter,  64. 

Thacher,  Rev.  S.  C,  minister  of  New 
South,  72;  88;  characterized  by  W. 
C.  Gannett,  n.,  88;  91 ;  quoted,  121; 
131. 

Thackeray,  William  Makepeace, 
quoted,  45. 

Thom,  J.  H.,  338. 

Thoreau,  Henry,  n.,  5. 

Ticknor,  George,  impressions  of  young 
Channing,  64,  65. 

Tiffan)',  Dr.  C.  C,  n.,  107. 

Tocqueville,  de,  165. 

Toynbee,  Arthur,  305. 

Tuckerman,  Henry  T.,  criticises  Chan- 
ning, 198,  199. 

Tuckerman,  Dr.  Joseph,  classmate  of 
Channing,  n.,  29;  gives  Channing 
right  hand  of  fellowship,  64  ;  the 
ministry  at  large,  323,  324 ;  sermon 
preached  at  ordination  of  Barnard 
and  Gray,  325;  326;  n.,  363;  366; 
anecdote,  367  ;  380. 

Tyler,  John,  420. 

Tyndale,  William,  94. 

Tyndall,  Prof.  John,  172 ;  417. 

Vanderbilt,  Alfred,  n.,  374. 

Vanderbilt,  Cornelius,  n.,  374. 

Van  Dyke,  Rev.  Henry,  441;  quoted, 

442. 
Voltaire,  282 ;  346. 

Walker,  Dr.  James,  138 ;  leader  in 
Unitarian  organization,  180  ;  328 ; 
n.,  348. 

Walker,  Prof.  Williston,  n.,  22;  n., 
105  ;  n.  112  ;  n.,  117. 

Ware,  Rev.  Henry,  Jr.,  152  ;  quoted, 
177  ;  leader  in  the  new  Unitarian 
organization,  180 ;  n.,  323  ;  328; 
353  ;  370. 

Ware,  Dr.  Henry,  Sr.,  made  professor 
in  Harvard,  117;  controversy  with 
Prof.  Woods,  151,  153. 

Washington,  George,  visit  to  New- 
port, 18 ;  37. 

Watson,  bishop  of  Llandafif,  his  '  Apo- 
logy for  the  Bible,"  36;  37  ;  61. 

Watts,  Dr.  Isaac,  96;  life  of,  108  ;  n., 
108. 

Webber,  professor  at  Harvard,  30. 

Webster,  Daniel,  reply  to  Hayne,  147 ; 


INDEX 


463 


adopts  protection,  192,  260;    285; 

288;    conduct  of    Creole  case,  413, 

414  ;    415  ;  speech  in  Faneuil  Hall, 

420,  421 ;  431. 
Weld,  Theodore  D.,  n.,  267. 
Weld,  William  G.,  gives  a  statue   of 

Channing,  n.,  438. 
WeUington,  Duke  of,  293. 
Wells,  William,  Jr.,  n.,  129. 
Wesley,  John,  n.,  41 ;    n.,  96. 
Whiston,  96  ;  98. 
White,  Bishop,  107. 
White,  Daniel  Appleton,  n.,  59. 
White,   Joseph    Blanco,    corresponds 

with  Channing,  n.,  329,  385-387. 
Whitman,  Bernard,  156,  157  ;  replies 

to  Prof.  Stuart,  167. 
Whitney,  Eli,  inventor  of  cotton-gin, 

45. 
Whittemore,  Dr.  Thomas,  n.,  127. 
Whittier,  John  G.,  185  ;  267  ;  quoted, 

n.,  293  ;  writes  poem  on  Channing, 

424,  425. 
Wiclif,  John,  94. 
Wightman,  Edward,  94. 


Willard,  Sidney,  President,  n.,  29 ; 
31  ;  n.,  37  ;  59. 

Williams,  Rev.  Mr.,  98. 

Williams,  Roger,  doctrine  of  "  soul 
liberty,"  1. 

Winchester,  Elhanan,  109  ;  110  ;   111. 

Wollstonecraft,  Mary,  47. 

Woodberry,  Prof.  G.  E.,  n.,  79  ;  370. 

Woods,  Prof.  Leonard,  college  mate 
of  Channing,  n.,  29;  120;  121; 
controversy  with  Prof.  Ware,  151- 
153. 

Worcester,  Rev.  Noah,  126 ;  135 ; 
secretary  of  the  Peace  Society,  299. 

Worcester,  Dr.  Samuel,  dismissed 
from  Fitchburg,  117  ;  attacks  Chan- 
ning's  letters,  135,  136;  140;  n., 
143;   150. 

Wordsworth,  William,  American  re- 
print, 68;  171;  172;  Channing 
meets,  173-175  ;  Channing's  favorite 
poet,  209 ;  371. 

Wren,  Sir  Christopher,  72. 

Wright,  Frances,  350. 


EUctrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  <5r»  Co. 
Camhridge,   Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 


Date  Due 


N  1- '41i 

Ue  gS  '4:r 


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